
I 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No... 

Shell...! 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






JESUS CHRIST 
DURING HIS MINISTRY 



JESUS CHRIST: 
His Person — His Authority — His Work. 



I, Jesus Christ before His Ministry. 

$1.25. 

II. Jesus Christ during His Minis- 
try. $1.25. 

III. The Death and Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ. {In preparation.) 



JESUS CHRIST 

DURING HIS MINISTRY 



BY ' 

edmond: stapfer 

PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF PROTESTANT 
THEOLOGY AT PARIS 



^ranslatetf ftg 
LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON 



N^ 



t> 



'V 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1897 






Copyright, 1897, 
By Charles Scribner's Sons. 



©mbctsttg Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



PEEFACE 



T PROPOSE in the following pages to 
speak of Jesus Christ during his min- 
istry. With but rare exceptions I shall 
carefully banish from this book all dis- 
cussion of the text, every interpretation 
of it, theological or critical. I shall re- 
late only established facts, or facts easy 
to establish, and shall permit myself to 
make no conjectures but such as are 
entirely plausible. The task as I conceive 
it has therefore its limit; nevertheless, it 
is still sufficiently complex to forbid me 
to embarrass it by the discussion of con- 
troverted passages. But wherever the fact 
is certain and the sayings of Jesus perfectly 
authentic, I shall make use of them, and 
shall endeavor to draw from them all that 
they actually contain. 



VI PREFACE 

I would add that I shall pass over in 
silence many details, which though impor- 
tant are not essential to the end which I 
propose to myself. 

It is to be observed, indeed, that my 
title is not " The Ministry of Jesus Christ," 
but "Jesus Christ during his Ministry," 
which is different. I propose, in fact, to 
speak above all things of Jesus himself, to 
ask what he thought, what he purposed 
to do, what he professed to be, and, as 
my general title says, what he said of his 
person, what authority he claimed, and 
what work he desired to do. I desire to 
look for nothing else, and to speak of 
nothing else; and here, as in my first 
volume, I judge it to be needless to re- 
peat what the Gospels say. I shall par- 
ticularly seek for what they have not 
said, but in this search I take as point of 
departure certain data given by the Gospels 
themselves. 

It is therefore not my intention to follow 
the usual method of Lives of Jesus, setting 
forth the New Testament narratives in a 
more or less chronological order, and 



PREFACE vii 

studying them critically and exegetically. 
I shall take the Bible story as a whole, 
and shall try to draw from the impression 
left by reading it a picture of the person 
of Christ, and especially a history of his 
thought. 

I shall touch upon the events which 
occurred in the life of Jesus only so far as 
they may serve to throw light upon what 
took place in his soul. 

In this, as in the first volume, the reader 
will see that Jesus "destroyed" nothing, 
and that he "fulfilled" all things. This 
word is the key of many apparent enigmas 
and contradictions. I hope to show that 
everything that Jesus said, did, thought, 
and preached had its roots in the past, and 
by a slow and sure evolution was made by 
him entirely new. 

One word more: In writing this book 
I would not forget that the moral and 
religious life is not to be studied as natural 
history is studied, that a simple statement 
of facts does not explain everything, and 
that the methods which lead to an acquaint- 
ance with the spiritual world can by no 



Vlll PREFACE 

means be the same as those which lead to a 
knowledge of the world of nature. Here 
as elsewhere the saying of Pascal is true : 
"The heart has its reasoning which the 
reason knows nothing of;" and the soul 
may have intuitions of the true which 
objective observation will forever fall 
short of giving to the learned. 



CONTENTS 



Page 
Preface v 

Introduction xi 



Chapter 

I. The Earlier Activity of Jesus . 3 

II. The Language of Jesus ... 20 

III. The Earliest Teachings of Jesus 39 

IV. The Messiah and his Work . . 59 
V. Jesus and Miracles 76 

VI. Earliest Preaching of Jesus on 

the Kingdom of God .... 96 
VII. The Kingdom prepared for by 

the Lowly and the Poor . . Ill 

VIII. Journeys to Jerusalem .... 128 

IX. Opposition to Jesus 143 

X. Institution of the Apostolate . 159 

XI. The Summer of the Year 29. . 177 



X CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

XII. Final Departure for Jerusalem 197 

XIII. The Names assumed by Jesus . 221 

XIV. The Requirements of Jesus . . 238 

Conclusion 261 



INTRODUCTION 

THE SOURCES OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 

n^HE earliest information about Jesus 
which we have is given us by St. 
Paul. His name is continually repeated 
in the few letters of the apostle which 
have come down to us, and Paul appears 
to have been very precisely informed upon 
the principal events in the life of his 
Master. Had he known him personally? 
It can hardly be supposed ; but it is highly 
possible that he had seen him, and often 
seen him, walking in the porticos of the 
Temple ; perhaps he had heard him replying 
to the Pharisees when he himself, a young 
and high-spirited disciple of Gamaliel, was 
carrying on his studies in Jerusalem. 

However this may have been, Paul 
counted among his intimate friends men 
who had lived in Jesus' company, Barnabas l 
and Silas, 2 for example, and in the earlier 

1 Acts iv. 36, etc. 2 Acts xv. 22. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

days John surnamed Mark, 1 who later 
became the companion of Peter. 

Paul had also spent a fortnight at Jeru- 
salem with Peter and James; 2 he had had 
the opportunity of receiving from their 
lips many details of the life of Christ, and 
he certainly had done so. We know that 
Paul narrated the life of Jesus in his 
churches, and in particular that he de- 
scribed his Passion in such moving terms 
that it seemed as if Jesus were crucified 
anew before his hearers. 3 He also de- 
scribed the resurrection of the Lord — we 
know with what power and what insist- 
ence. 4 More than this, his letters abound 
in allusions to the teachings of Jesus, con- 
cerning marriage, 5 for example, or the 
Lord's Supper, 6 or mere citations of the 
Master's precepts. 7 

Taken as a whole the testimony of St. 
Paul gives a very accurate, very clear, 
and very lifelike portrait of Jesus. The 
principal features of his life are brought 
out by the apostle, and his allusions con- 

1 Acts xii. 12, 25. 2 Gal. i. 18, 19. 

3 Gal. iii. 1. 4 1 Cor. xv. and passim. 

5 1 Cor. vii. 10 f. si Cor. xL 23 ft. 

7 See also Acts xx. 35. 



INTR OD UCTION xiii 

firm in advance that which the Gospels 
say at a later day. 

This, in a few words, is what Paul gives 
us to know about Jesus: his birth, his 
Davidic origin, the time of his appearing, 
which was that determined by God, the 
humility of his earthly condition, his per- 
fect holiness, his Messianic dignity, the 
character of his life : perfect fulfilment of 
the will of God; that of his mission: to 
preach, himself, to the people of Israel 
only, and to leave instructions for the fu- 
ture with twelve apostles, by them making 
the gift of his Gospel to all men ; his death 
upon the cross, which is the seal of the 
new covenant; the circumstances accom- 
panying his death: the last supper; the 
institution of the Holy Communion; the 
betrayal' by Judas ; finally the resurrection 
on the third day; the order of the appear- 
ances of the Risen Lord, concluding with 
his life in heaven with God, whence he 
shall return to judgment. It is evident that 
in the details given and the allusions here 
and there made by St. Paul, nothing essen- 
tial is lacking in the life of Jesus Christ. 

After St. Paul we must cite as among 
the most ancient documents the earlier 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

chapters of the book of the Acts of the 
Apostles. Not that this book was written 
at an early date ; at earliest it was hardly 
written before the year 80; but in the 
beginning of his narrative Luke, who is its 
author, gives a picture of the first Church 
in Jerusalem, — a Church composed of 
ocular witnesses of the earthly work of 
Jesus, his immediate disciples, who in 
the words they utter recall the essential 
features of their Master's life. 

The discourses of Peter, especially, are 
extremely important. In them we see 
what was the Gospel of the earliest days ; 
when the apostle speaks of Jesus Christ 
we have the witness of the disciple to his 
Lord given only a few weeks after his 
death. He pictures Jesus as a just man, 
approved of God and men, the servant of 
Jehovah, preaching the Good Tidings, 
healing the sick, going about doing good, 
choosing twelve apostles. 1 

He also narrates his death, with the 
betrayal by Judas, the special guilt of the 
Sadducees in forcing Pilate's consent, 
the accusation brought against the Christ 
of having wished to destroy the Temple 
i Acts ii. 22 ff. : iii. 13 ft. : iv. 10 ff. 



INTR OD UCTION XV 

and abrogate the Law, his resurrection on 
the third day, the preaching of remission 
of sins through his name, — all this 
expressed with a grand simplicity which 
inspires confidence. The narratives with 
which the Book of the Acts opens give 
us the primitive Gospel, that of the oral 
tradition; they have an unmistakable 
stamp of originality, and are of priceless 
value to the historian. 

But it is very evident that if we knew 
nothing more about Jesus than this, his 
person and work would remain almost 
unknown to us. Neither the Jews nor 
the Gentiles of his day wrote of him. The 
Talmud mentions his name, it is true, and 
even assumes to narrate his trial; but the 
story merits no credit, being only a tissue 
of falsehoods dictated by hatred. 1 Yet it 
serves to confirm the fact that Jesus with- 
stood the legalism and formalism of his 
people, and attacked the traditional pre- 
cepts of the Pharisees. 

As for Gentile writings, Suetonius, in an 
inexact and insignificant passage, mentions 
Jesus Christ under the name Chrestus; 2 

1 Jems. Talm. Sank. 14, 16 ; Babyl. Sank. 43 a, 67 a. 

2 Life of Claudius, § 16. 



Xvi IX TROD UC TI ON 

Tacitus, somewhat more explicit, 1 speaks 
of "Christ who was put to death under 
Tiberius, by the order of Pontius Pilate, 
and whose detestable superstition has 
spread everywhere abroad, even unto 
Rome." Finally, the younger Pliny, early 
in the second century, describes in a letter 
to Trajan 2 the assemblies of Christians in 
his province, saying that they sing hymns, 
"speaking to Christ as to a God." All 
these insignificant facts, which we mention 
only for the sake of completeness, teach 
us nothing about Jesus Christ which we 
did not already know; and, all things con- 
sidered, the Gospels are the only true 
source of the life of Jesus. 

Let us endeavor to describe how they 
were written, and say what degree of con- 
fidence we may accord to them. If we 
study them attentively, collecting the tes- 
timony of the oldest Fathers of the Church 
concerning the writings of the apostolic 
epoch, the following is what we shall 
discover : — 

The first disciple of Jesus who to our 
knowledge 3 concerned himself with put- 

1 Annals, xv. 4A. 2 Correspondence, 10, 96. 

8 " To our knowledge," because a great number of 



INTR OD UCTI ON x Vll 

ting into writing his Master's words, is the 
apostle Matthew. Between the years 50 
and 60 he composed a collection of the 
discourses, sayings, and parables of Jesus, 
writing it in the Aramaic tongue, that is, 
in the very language in which Jesus spoke. 
Matthew's collection was several times 
translated into Greek with many altera- 
tions, but none of importance. This 
primitive writing by Matthew, that is, the 
collection of the sayings of Jesus in 
Aramaic, no longer exists. 

About ten years after Matthew, between 
60 and 70, a disciple of Peter, John sur- 
named Mark, who served him as inter- 
preter, wrote a summary of the preachings 
of that apostle. This writing still exists 
just as Mark composed it ; it is our second 
Gospel. . It is true that some critics hold 
that ours is only a second recension, differ- 
ing somewhat from the original. But 
this hypothesis is not indispensable, and it 
is probable that it is the very text of Mark 
which we have before us. Later appeared 
a Gospel which also has been preserved, 
which we have in our New Testament, 

gospels were written in the first century, all except 
four being lost. 

b 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

which we call the Gospel according to St. 
Matthew, and whose true author is 
unknown. 

This is how this author composed his 
book. He took one of the Greek transla- 
tions of Matthew's collection of discourses, 
and also the summary of Peter's preaching 
which Mark had made, and combining 
these two documents he produced our 
first Gospel. Here and there he added 
what he had learned from oral tradition; 
for example, the manner of Jesus' coming 
into the world, his genealogy, his birth, 
the visit of the Wise Men; the opening 
chapters of his book ; and a few other facts 
scattered through the body of the work, 
which he alone relates. 1 The author had 
a well-defined purpose in writing this 
Gospel : to prove that Jesus Christ fulfilled 
the prophecies relating to the Messiah, 
and realized the promises made to the 
Jews in the Old Testament. 

About the same period, a little after 
70 a.d., Luke composed the third of the 
Gospels which we have in the New Testa- 

1 For example, the miracle of the stater, xrii. 24- 
27; the resurrection of the saints at the time of 
Jesus' death, xxvii. 52, 53. 



INTRODUCTION XIX 

ment. This document, as we have it, has 
undergone no retouching. In writing it 
Luke had before him several narratives of 
the life of Jesus. As a foundation he too 
made use of one of the Greek translations 
of Matthew's collection of the discourses, 
though not the one made use of by the 
author of the first Gospel, and differing 
somewhat from that one. He also took 
advantage of the Gospel by Mark. In the 
third place he had at hand a collection 
made at a date unknown to us, including 
a number of words and deeds of Jesus 
during one or more journeys between 
Galilee and Judea, and of which the 
writers of the first two Gospels had no 
knowledge. This narrative of the travels 
of Jesus Christ was utilized by Luke from 
verse 5L of chapter ix. to verse 28 of 
chapter xix. 

Luke had still other sources at his dis- 
posal. Such were the accounts of the 
Passion of Jesus Christ which he heard 
Paul give when he accompanied him on his 
missionary travels, and a collection by 
himself of Aramaean traditions concerning 
the birth of John the Baptist and of Jesus 
Christ. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

Such is the origin of our first three 
Gospels. 

To find the most authentic accounts of 
Jesus Christ we must first turn to the 
Gospel by Mark: it is the oldest; it 
should be the fundamental basis of every 
orderly narrative of the ministry of Jesus. 
The facts he gives should take precedence 
on all accounts. The Gospel of Mark is 
more impersonal than those of Matthew 
and Luke. While these have each their 
own purpose, and pursue it, Mark has no 
other aim but to relate what he remembers, 
and he gives the facts in chronological 
order. His Gospel is consequently a true 
drama, the drama of the life of the misun- 
derstood and murdered Messiah. There 
is no digression, no delay, no pause. All 
is animated, simple, natural. Mark neither 
interprets facts nor accounts for them ; he 
shows them. Therefore is this admirable 
document not simply the oldest Gospel; 
it is at the same time the surest, the most 
faithful, the most exact. But it is incom- 
plete, and the critic must complete it with 
the aid of the other two Synoptics. 

In this work his first care should be to 
compare Matthew and Luke, seeking all 



INTR OD U CTION XXI 

that they have preserved to us of the 
collection of discourses made by the apostle 
Matthew. In fact, we find in our first 
and third Gospels the substance of the 
words of Jesus collected by Matthew, since 
each of the authors had before him a Greek 
translation of this collection. 

This, therefore, is the most authentic 
common foundation, the solid base of 
what we most certainly know about Jesus 
Christ. 

Where the three accounts differ we 
must choose between them, always seeking 
the eldest text, a critical work of by no 
means insurmountable difficulty. Here 
the duty of the historian is to eliminate 
suspicious traditions, all that betrays a 
tendency foreign to strict historic verity, 
as, for . example, the injunctions which 
arise from doctrinal prepossessions. This 
work done, we must determine the frame- 
work of Jesus Christ's ministry, and make 
clear the order of the facts. It would be 
utterly impossible to perform this task if 
we had not the fourth Gospel, and here is 
the great usefulness, let us rather say, the 
unequalled value of the account of the life 
of Jesus of which it yet remains to speak. 



XXli IN TR ODUCTI ON 

With regard to the fourth Gospel, as 
with regard to the first three, historical 
criticism has arrived at nearly definitive 
results. 

It is impossible to misapprehend the 
unhistorical character of this book. We 
mean by this that the author deliberately 
sets aside a great number of important 
events, and that his intention is not to 
give us a biography of Jesus Christ, but 
to prove that Jesus was verily the Word 
made flesh, or, as he himself said, the 
Christ, the Son of God. 1 It results from 
this that his account is quite fragmentary, 
and tinctured with theological considera- 
tions completely foreign to the history. 
This is an incontestable fact, which should 
be recognized by every one. 

The fourth Gospel, then, cannot serve 
as a basis for the study of Jesus Christ's 
ministry, and this is why we began by 
speaking of the first three. They alone 
give us a solid preliminary standpoint. 

But we have also to find a standpoint 

in the fourth Gospel. All has by no 

means been said when it is said that this 

writing may not be taken for a complete 

1 John xx. 31. 



INTRODUCTION xxill 

narrative of the life of Jesus; it remains 
to point out its high documentary value. 

Side by side with the general unhistoric 
character which it presents to the impartial 
reader, another not less indisputable fact 
remains in our opinion to be recognized; 
that is, that the author lived in intimate 
association with an ocular witness of the 
life of Jesus, — a witness who felt himself 
to be of such authority as to give a differ- 
ent account from that of the first three 
evangelists, whose books he perfectly well 
knew, of sufficient authority to correct 
them, and put forth assertions which com- 
pleted, rectified, and sometimes contra- 
dicted theirs. The author of the fourth 
Gospel knows to their minutest details a 
great number of perfectly certain, entirely 
authentic facts in the life of Jesus, of 
which the authors of the first three narra- 
tives were entirely ignorant. 

More than this : with regard to the two 
critical moments in the life of Jesus Christ, 
the revulsion of popular feeling after the 
multiplication of the loaves, and his death 
upon the cross, this author is at one with 
the first three evangelists, confirming and 
completing them. And, finally, the outline 



Xxiv INT ROD UCTIOX 

of the life of Jesus which, he gives is much 
better than theirs. They mention only 
one journey of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, 
which is more than unlikely, which is im- 
possible. The author of the fourth Gos- 
pel parts company with them at this point, 
mentioning several such journeys, because 
he is more accurate and knows the facts 
better. 

For this reason the fourth Gospel is full 
of personal recollections whose character 
it is impossible to mistake. To take only 
a single example, its account of the 
Passion is the most vivid of the four, and 
among other details of marvellous truth the 
character of Pilate is admirably brought out. 

It seems to us impossible to deny the 
fact that the ocular witness of whom we 
speak can be no other than an apostle, and 
this apostle no other than John. If the 
form given to the discourses of Jesus is 
peculiar to the author of this book, and if 
the fourth Gospel abounds in theological 
deductions which can be nothing other 
than the evangelist's own reflections and 
not the authentic words of Jesus, 1 there 

1 It is to be observed that, in the first century, an 
author writing the life of any one not only pnt into 



INTROD UCTION XXV 

are also many utterances put into the 
mouth of the Christ which are certainly 
quite as historical as those which the first 
three evangelists attribute to him, and 
which bear the inimitable stamp of the 
authentic words of the Lord. 

Therefore this book, which is not a life 
of Jesus Christ (it is at once too dogmatic 
and too fragmentary for that), is neverthe- 
less a very accurate document, and must 
be consulted by those who would under- 
stand the life of Jesus. It may even be 
said that upon many essential points it is 
by much the most accurate of the four. 
Only the authority of an apostle can be 
the basis of a book which, when it appeared, 
differed so widely from the first three 
Gospels already received by the Church, 
accepted as true, consecrated by piety, and 
which parted company from them so 
entirely. 1 

his mouth what he had really said, but what he might 
have said ; and the words which the author was con- 
vinced that he might have uttered were considered 
quite as authentic as if he had really spoken them. 

1 The proofs of the historicity of the fourth Gospel 
so far as the last week and the Passion are concerned, 
are of altogether convincing force. Jesus names him- 
self to the soldiers who have come to arrest him, 



XXVI INTRODUCTION 

Who, then, is the author of the fourth 
Gospel? Let us ask the book itself. It 
replies clearly that he draws very imme- 
diately from St. John, but is not St. John. 
When he speaks of the "beloved disciple," 
he speaks in the third person. Of course 
this might be only a literary form. Anti- 
quity affords us a well-known example. 
The Commentaries of Julius Caesar were 
written by Caesar himself, and nowhere 
does he designate himself by the pronoun 
of the first person. But the system adopted 
by the writer of the fourth Gospel is very 

Judas goes out from the upper chamber after re- 
ceiving the sop, etc. The Gospel clears up many 
seeming improbabilities in the Synoptic account. 
John states that Jesus died on the very day when the 
paschal lamb was eaten; so does the Talmud ("the 
eve of Pasca," Babyl. Sank. 43a, 67a). He says noth- 
ing of the payment of money to Judas. With regard 
to the six months before the Passion, John alone is 
well informed. He shows the death of Jesus as 
already resolved upon in the month of February or 
March (xi. 53, 54); at that time Jesus retires to 
Ephraim, the order for his arrest is given (xi. 55, 56). 
The Synoptics know nothing of all this. Finally and 
especially the fact that immediately after his arrest 
Jesus was led to Annas (xviii. 13), who, as we know, 
had a house on the Mount of Olives, is the strongest 
possible proof of the historic value of the fourth 
Gospel (cf. Penan, Vie de Jesus, 1st edition, p. 
394.) 



INT ROD UCTI ON XX vii 

different, for not simply does he never speak 
of John except in the third person, he is 
careful to distinguish himself from him ; he 
speaks of John without ever naming him, 
and always in terms of eulogy; he desig- 
nates him with veiled expressions and in 
terms of invariable admiration: it is evi- 
dent that he is tenderly attached to him. 
He brings out John's superiority, and the 
peculiar affection of Jesus for him. The 
apostle John, writing for himself, would 
not thus have written about himself; and 
yet all that we have said of the Johannine 
origin of the fourth Gospel remains. One 
solution alone is possible, — this book was 
written by a disciple of St. John who 
drew his inspiration from his master. 
We may almost say that the fourth Gos- 
pel was. composed in collaboration by the 
apostle John and one of his disciples who 
acted as penman; and just as he has 
nowhere written his master's name, he 
has nowhere made an error, and this book 
has nothing in common with what is called 
a pseudepigraph. 

We have one proof of this assertion in a 
fact which it is impossible to contest. It 
is universally admitted that chapter xxi. 



XX viii INTR OD UCTI ON 

was added to the Gospel after its comple- 
tion and even after St. John's death. 
Now, the style of this appendix — which 
in any case is not that of St. John, since 
it was written after his death — is pre- 
cisely the same as that of the Gospel. It 
is by the same writer; then this writer 
not being John for the twenty-first chapter 
is also not John for the first twenty 
chapters. The appendix was added by the 
disciple who, a little while before, had 
written the Gospel under the direction of 
the apostle. This appears to us incon- 
testable. 

It is to be remarked also that the Gospel 
of John was thought in Hebrew, that the 
construction of the sentences is entirely 
Hebraic. We may therefore admit that 
we have an almost literal translation, made 
by him who held the pen while the apostle 
spoke to him in Aramaic. There was a 
duality of authorship, — a duality which 
is indeed betrayed by the pronoun in 
the first person plural, here and there 
employed. 

More than this, the writer-secretary from 
time to time introduces his own reflections. 
For example he says : " He that hath seen 



INTRODUCTION XXIX 

hath borne witness, and his witness is 
true; and he knoweth that he saith true, 
that ye also may believe." 1 That is to 
say, " John attested what he saw when he 
related to me the death upon the cross, and 
now he knows that his attestation is true ; 
I hear him saying so at the moment when 
I am writing these lines." This is evi- 
dently a personal reflection of the writer, a 
writer who is not "he that hath seen." 

This literary method of a book written 
by two people appears at first strange. It 
is not in the least so, if we put ourselves 
back in the time of the apostles. They, 
especially Peter and John, must have been 
very ill versed in Greek, if indeed they so 
much as knew a word of it. But if they 
wrote epistles or gospels, they could pub- 
lish them only in Greek. If they had 
written them in their mother tongue, their 
books would not have been widely scat- 
tered, and they would have been lost, as 
Matthew's collection of the sayings of 
Jesus was lost. They therefore took col- 
laborators, aids, secretaries. Peter, who 
had John Mark for interpreter, had also 
Silas, and caused Silas to write his epistle. 

1 John xix. 35. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

He says it in so many words. 1 In the 
same way John, having to write a gospel, 
acquitted himself of his task as he could, 
giving the facts to a secretary who assur- 
edly was not chosen at hap-hazard, and 
who made admirable use of what the 
apostle related to him. 

To return now to the question which we 
have put to ourselves: How may we 
reconstruct the outline of the ministry of 
Jesus Christ? Three Paschal feasts were 
celebrated in the course of it, 2 and it must 
therefore have occupied two and a half 
years. If next we attempt to put the 
events in their proper dates and to show a 
progress, a development, in the ministry 
of Jesus Christ, we must still address our- 
selves to the fourth Gospel. 

The first three group the facts without 
the slightest hint of progress or develop- 
ment; but, on the other hand, we find in 
them, especially in the Gospel of Mark, 
notes of time which grow out of the nature 
of the events, and these indications of 
time impress themselves upon the reader 
all the more strongly because the Evan- 

i 1 Pet, v. 12. 2 John ii. 23 : vi. 4 : xiii. 1. 



INTR OD UC TION xxxi 

gelists had no thought of indicating them, 
and were themselves not aware of them. 

Thus there is a moment in Jesus Christ's 
ministry — a "turning-point," as the Ger- 
mans say — which marks very nearly the 
middle of his public life, and which is 
indicated in all the four Gospels. 1 It is 
the moment when the people turn away 
from Jesus Christ, when he loses the 
popularity which up to that time he had 
enjoyed. It is precisely a year before his 
death; for this event followed the multi- 
plication of the loaves, which St. John 
expressly places in the neighborhood of a 
Passover which can only have been that 
of the year 29. 2 

Consequently, the ministry of Jesus 
Christ is to be divided into three parts; 
or, more correctly speaking, there are 
three periods of undeniable authenticity 
in the ministry of Jesus Christ, — 

I. The Galilean Ministry (preaching of 
the Gospel of the Kingdom; the Beati- 
tudes ; the visit to Nazareth ; the parables 

i Matt. xvi. ; Mark viii. ; Luke ix. ; John vi. 

2 " Can only have been," on the supposition that 
Jesus was crucified in the year 30, — a very possible 
date, but concerning the accuracy of which a degree 
of doubt exists. 



XXX11 INTRODUCTION 

of the Kingdom of Heaven ; teachings and 
cures). This first period is characterized 
by the lively enthusiasm which Jesus 
inspired, and the great popularity which 
he enjoyed. His ministry opened in hope 
and joy. He was encircled with universal 
sympathy. He went up and down the 
country performing miracles of benevo- 
lence, attacking the official representatives 
of the theocracy; and the multitudes 
approved. He replied to the messengers 
of John the Baptist, and pronounced upon 
him a decisive judgment. He proclaimed 
the freedom of the conscience. This 
period terminates with the discourse 
known as the Sermon on the Mount, in 
which are collected a large proportion of 
the discourses spoken during this time. The 
choice of the twelve apostles marks its close. 
II. The second period of Jesus' ministry 
now opens. It began with the open hos- 
tility of the Pharisees, who accuse him of 
casting out demons by Beelzebub. Jesus 
in his turn rebukes the Pharisees, and 
parts company with them. Soon the 
people also cease to understand him, and 
abandon him. By one of those changes of 
mood common to crowds, a reaction takes 



INT ROD UC TION XXXiii 

place. The popularity of Jesus suddenly 
wanes. The people accuse him of having tri- 
fled with their Messianic hopes. This crisis 
occurs precisely a year before Jesus' death. 
This second period is better known than 
the preceding one, — that of favor and 
success, which is somewhat enshrouded in 
obscurity and hesitation. These are its 
principal events: Jesus publicly breaks 
with the Jewish Messianic hopes ; learning 
of the death of John the Baptist, and feel- 
ing himself watched by Herod, he retires 
into solitude, and begins his ministry of 
wandering, often going beyond the limits 
of Herod's territory (Tyre, Sidon, Csesarea 
Philippi), and entering upon a life of 
greater intimacy with his apostles. This 
second period closes with the confession of 
Peter, and the first prediction of his own 
nearly approaching death by violence. 
These are the facts, the exterior events. 
To these exterior events correspond interior 
events in the soul of Jesus. The convic- 
tion dawns upon him that his work is not 
to be accomplished by words and miracles, 
and that his death is probably necessary 
to the coming of the kingdom. We say 
probably, for even while affirming that his 



XXXI V IN TE OD UCTION 

death was inevitable he hoped to the end 
that his Father would spare him this sacri- 
fice. But he clearly saw that the conver- 
sion of his people was not to be secured 
simply by the means which up to this time 
he had employed. He was obliged to give 
up the hope of accomplishing the pure 
spiritualization of Judaism as certain of the 
Pharisees understood it. He himself gave 
up his Judaism, and became in the most 
absolute sense unsectarian. He was no 
longer to be simply the spiritual and moral 
Messiah who was born in the days of the 
temptation in the desert; he was to be the 
suffering Messiah, sealing his work by 
martyrdom. His death was to precede the 
coming of the kingdom, which he still 
continued to proclaim near at hand. 

III. The third period may be entitled 
The Final Struggle and the Last "Week. 1 
We shall study it in our third volume. It 
is the best-known period of Jesus' life. 
The light which authentic documents shed 
upon his life, a light which from the begin- 
ning grows ever stronger, is for these last 
days as perfect as could be desired. 

1 Matt, xx.-xxTiii. ; Mark x.-xvi. ; Luke ix. 53- 
xxir. : John yii.-xx. 



JESUS CHRIST 

HIS PERSON, HIS AUTHORITY, HIS 
WORK 



JESUS CHRIST DURING HIS MINISTRY 



CHAPTER I 

' THE EARLIER ACTIVITY OF JESUS 

/^\UR first volume brought events down 
^ > ^ to the time when Jesus, at about 
thirty years of age, began his ministry. 
Still thrilling through and through with 
the burning words of John the Baptist, 
and the solemn refrain of his preaching, 
" Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is 
at hand," he began by repeating these 
words, and for the time he said no others. 
But it was not at Nazareth that he was 
to preach what he already called the " gos- 
pel," — the good news, that is, — the com- 
ing renovation of things, prepared for by 
a change in men's hearts and lives. In 
Nazareth he had no authority: he had 
been known there from childhood, and 
" no man is a prophet in his own country." 
And, besides, he would there remain un- 
known. Nazareth is hidden away in the 



4 JESUS CHRIST 

hills ; he needed a centre from which to 
radiate into the far distance. Therefore 
he chose Capernaum, deciding that this 
village should be the point of departure 
for his preaching, his calls to his people. 
The choice was, no doubt, the result of 
careful investigation on his part. He 
might have stationed himself elsewhere ; 
but remaining in Galilee, giving up for 
the outset the idea of Jerusalem, 1 he could 
be nowhere better placed than in Caper- 
naum. He certainly knew this town and 
all the lake shore, and in his youth he had 
often taken the six or seven hours' walk 
which separated Xazareth from the Sea 
of Galilee. 

He decided, therefore, to leave the place 
where he had always lived. The rupture 
was certainly painful. This village where 
he had grown up was entwined with mem- 
ories not merely of his childhood, but of 
all his youth and his life up to the age of 
thirty. It is true that these memories 
were of mingled character. His mother 
did not understand him : his brothers dis- 

i " For the outset," because his first attempts upon 
Jerusalem had not succeeded. See, further, Chapter 
Y1H., " Journeys to Jerusalem." 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 5 

approved of him ; James especially, — the 
austere, strict, fastidious Jew, — who was 
nearly of his own age, must have looked 
upon him as a prodigal son, and later, 
when he became aware of Jesus' breadth 
of view, his heresies, his violation of the 
Sabbath, would suspect him of madness. 
But this was of minor importance ; for 
Jesus to leave Nazareth, to go away, was 
to break with all that he had dearest in 
the world. 

On leaving Nazareth the road ascends, 
and the view opens more and more widely. 
The culminating point of the way is one 
of the highest in all Galilee. Jesus could 
see immense regions spread out around 
him, and in the distance Mount Hermon, 
eternally -white, towering above the lower 
mountains, whose large undulations de- 
scend toward the Sea of Tiberias, still in- 
visible, hidden behind its terraced hills. 
When at last it comes into view, it is a 
sheet of grayish blue, seen only in glimpses 
against the distant background, and grad- 
ually coming more clearly into view. 
From these high points might be seen on 
its banks cities, villages, — white houses, 



6 JESUS CHRIST 

cubes of masonry in great number, far 
away and very low, as upon a map. 

Galilee in that time was throbbing with 
intense life; and when one sees it to-day 
so gray and dead, the contrast is poignant. 
When Jesus from the top of the hills first 
saw the lake, he saw at the same time 
Tiberias, Magdala, Bethsaida, and number- 
less barks skimming the water. Into the 
midst of this simple and artless popula- 
tion, he was about to bring his new ideas, 
— the preaching of John the Baptist, and 
still other things ; all that was fermenting 
in his soul, all that for eighteen years had 
been working in his mind and drawing him 
on, and all that he was shortly to add to 
this ; for his thought was on the march, 
and every day some new horizon would 
open before him, and he would better 
understand the Father's will. His meat 
was to do that will, and thus to accom- 
plish his work. 

In going to Capernaum he did not take 
Tiberias in his way. This idolatrous or 
would-be idolatrous city, peopled with 
pagans and foreigners, inspired in him 
the aversion with which it inspired every 
loyal and patriotic Israelite. He went 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 7 

directly to the lake, and then walked 
along its banks ; * and it was there that 
he met his first friends — perhaps by ap- 
pointment, — two brothers, Simon and 
Andrew, and farther on two other broth- 
ers, James and John. These four young 
men, particularly the last two, his own 
cousins, were to stand to him in the place 
of his family, and would never again leave 
him. John had already known him for a 
long time, had loved and followed him, 
and was united to Jesus in a close and 
tender friendship. He also had felt the 
influence of the Baptist, had been his dis- 
ciple ; and already for years, no doubt, 
Jesus and John had thought together, 
studied together, understood and found 
light together. Alone of the apostles at 
the foot of the cross, it would be for him 
to take the place of son to the mother of 
the Crucified One. 

Capernaum and its neighboring villages, 
Bethsaida and Chorazin, were to be the 
favorite haunts of Jesus, and this corner 
of the earth's surface was to become the 
cradle of Christianity and of the world. 
New ideas were soon to be fermenting there. 

i Mark i. 16 ; Matt. iv. 18. 



8 JESUS CHRIST 

At Capernaum the house of Simon and 
Andrew, both of them sons of a certain 
Johanan, became the first shelter and 
abode of Jesus. Soon, thanks to a com- 
mon purse, which he established after the 
Essenian custom, he rented a house, — one 
of those mean dwellings, low-roofed and 
windowless, in which people only spend 
the night. It was not in the house that he 
spoke, but in the open air, on the shore 
of the lake, the plashing of whose harmless 
wavelets was far too gentle to stifle his 
voice. More or less everywhere on the 
lake-shore Jesus taught. The crowds 
listened standing on the shores ; the fisher- 
men brought their boats to the very mar- 
gin of the grass to listen, while he, seated 
in the boat of Simon Cephas, pronounced 
a few beatitudes or related a parable. 
Water-fowl swam around the boat; the 
sky quivered with light, and the waves 
came softly up to die upon pebble and 
sand, amid the grass and the flowers. 

The stones of the shore which travellers 
to-day tread under foot have heard his 
words, but we can hear them only through 
his disciples. He preached the gospel of 
the early days, adding to the preaching of 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 9 

John the Baptist the announcement of the 
Father's love and universal brotherhood. 
He proclaimed pardon and infinite mercy 
at a time when men knew only laws of 
blood and vengeance, gods of gloom and 
jealousy ; and he who thus spoke belonged 
to Israel, that is to say, to the most exclusive 
race of all antiquity. And it was the very 
gospel, the good news, which he brought to 
earth, the best which it had ever heard 
or will ever hear. Now, this fact is not to 
be explained ; and he who does not here 
admit a revelation, and persists in say- 
ing this is an inexplicable enigma, seems 
indeed to be wilfully closing his eyes to 
historic evidence, superabundantly demon- 
strated. 

At other times Jesus went about the 
country, passing through the admirably 
cultivated plain of Genesareth, which lay 
pent up between the sea and the moun- 
tains, and crossed by the road from Jerusa- 
lem to Damascus, — the road which St. 
Paul journeyed over a few hours before his 
conversion, and where caravans were un- 
ceasingly passing. This plain was a para- 
dise, an enchanted garden filled with trees 
and flowers. 



10 JESUS CHRIST 

But let no one believe in what has been 
called the Galilean idyl. Jesus found 
himself everywhere surrounded with great 
suffering, and he was constantly moved 
with compassion. If he preached, it was 
because he had a mission to fulfil. It is 
certain that he had not earlier begun his 
ministry because he had been waiting for a 
divine call. Now he had heard it; God 
had spoken to him in his baptism. He was 
speaking to him every day; and the most 
profound sentiment in Jesus' heart was the 
desire to accomplish the work of God, the 
work which the Father had given him to 
do. Now he was carried out of himself in 
compassion for his whole people. His will, 
always sincere, firm, and when the time 
came heroic, was henceforth the steadfast 
will of that which is good, or, rather, of that 
which is God's will. Is it too daring to as- 
sume that the first two petitions of the 
prayer which he taught his disciples -were 
in those days constantly upon his lips be- 
cause they had been constantly in his heart 
during the years which immediately pre- 
ceded his public life, years of pondering 
and waiting, and that they were more than 
ever in his heart and on his lips at the pre- 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 1J 

cise moment when he went to live in 
Capernaum, — " Father, hallowed be thy 
name ! " " Thy kingdom come ! " Two 
sentiments were dominant in him, — an 
intense and tender compassion for the 
moral and material wretchedness which 
surrounded him, and a communion with 
God which sustained and carried him 
without the slightest faltering. God was 
there, — he felt him, heard him, lived with 
and in him ; and this union with the 
Father was the source of a deep peace and 
an immense joy which sometimes thrilled 
through him and filled him utterly. 

An itinerant Essene in his manners, a 
liberal Pharisee in his ideas, — such Jesus 
appears to us all through this first period 
of his activity. During these first months 
of his ministry he remained in the great 
current of the best Pharisaic doctrines, 
not separating himself from Judaism. 
His object was to prepare by his preaching 
for the coming of the kingdom, and he 
firmly hoped to be recognized and hailed 
as Messiah by the people ; and, above all, 
by their leaders, the Pharisees. 

He lived in the Essenian way, but he did 
not conduct himself as an Essene toward 



12 JESUS CHRIST 

those who approached him. The people 
who hung upon his footsteps often made, 
indeed, a very motley company. Among 
them were individuals with whom respect- 
able persons did not associate ; * and while 
the Essene would have held himself to be 
contaminated if he had been touched by a 
person less strict than himself, Jesus, by 
way of protest against such narrowness, 
dined with these pariahs, and declared that 
he was come to seek sinners. 2 

Thus he went from village to village, 
accepting hospitality, or even taking it, 
according to custom. A guest had much 
authority in those days. The master of 
the house placed himself at his service, and 
showed him great confidence. Thus it was 
that the first propagation of the gospel was 
made by fireside preaching. 

Rabbi Jehoshua would enter, pronounce 
a few words of greeting, relate one or two 
allegorical stories. The women would 
leave their work, and seat themselves at 
his feet according to Oriental custom ; the 
children would run to see and be blessed 
by the journeying Rabbi. In the evening 

1 Matt ix. 10 f . ; Luke xv. 

2 Matt, ix. 11 f . ; Mark ii. 16 ff. ; Luke v. 30 fi. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 13 

they would bring to him the sick persons 
of the town, for every Rabbi was a doctor ; 
he would give them counsel and heal them. 
He revealed to them the pearl of great 
price ; he brought the hidden treasure ; 
every one was touched and moved, many 
declared themselves for him. They said : 
" What authority ! what power ! what 
new teaching ! " On the morrow the same 
scenes would be repeated in the next 
village. Many details are thus explained 
by Oriental customs. Jesus said that the 
laborer was worthy of his hire, and his hire 
was the hospitality which he received. To 
lodge with a citizen was a sort of public 
right, for there were hostelries only in the 
large cities. 

But Capernaum remained his centre. Its 
name signifies " small town " (caphar, vil- 
lage). Jesus loved it much. 1 On Satur- 
days especially he made a point of teaching 
in its synagogue. During the week he 
went about in the country among the scat- 
tered population. 

The synagogue lent itself admirably to 
his purpose. The service was open to the 
public, who might make objections and put 

1 Matt. ix. 1 ; Mark ii. 1. 



14 JESUS CHRIST 

questions to the speaker. A certain dis- 
order reigned there, and there was no 
solemnity. People conversed, observed 
one another, put questions to one another. 
At times the discussions were very ani- 
mated. For example, there were questions 
of precedence that made a great stir in 
this little world. Men wanted the first 
place, the highest seat. Nothing in the 
synagogues resembled the silence which 
reigns in Christian churches, and which 
we call respect for the holy place. 

In consequence, for Jesus to address the 
meeting or offer himself as reader, gave 
him an admirable opportunity to make 
known his mission. His agreement with 
the Pharisees, who, however, were not 
numerous in Galilee, was complete. He 
himself was most fully persuaded that he 
was in the true line of good Pharisaism. 
He was found to speak well, and was 
greatly admired. 1 

His field of action was in all very 
limited. Jesus hardly went beyond the 
sort of gulf which the lake forms between 
Tiberias and the mouth of the Jordan, a 

1 Matt. vii. 28, xiii. 54; Mark i. 22, vi. 2; Luke iv. 
22, 32. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 15 

curve of three leagues. It begins with 
rocks at the exit from Tiberias; then a 
plain opens out, — the land of Genesareth, 
of which we have spoken. In it lies the 
village of Magdala. 

At the end of the plain is a road cut out 
of the rock, which still exists, and which 
Jesus surely often followed; then comes 
Capernaum, and in its neighborhood Dal- 
manutha, Bethsaida, Chorazin, lost cities 
whose site will be forever unknown. 

These villages were densely populated ; 
their inhabitants were fishermen, worthy 
and peaceable men, not without intelli- 
gence and even refinement, but densely 
ignorant, and with a very incomplete Jew- 
ish education. They were sufficiently 
well to do, and though not of pure race, 
like the Jews of Jerusalem, they had no 
Greek blood. Among these people Jesus 
recruited his first disciples, who, however, 
continued to work at their fisher's calling. 1 
Later he would choose twelve disciples. 
He had not yet thought of doing so ; but 
we have already seen four of them, — 
John and James, Peter and Andrew, — 
who, especially the first three, were to 

1 Matt. iv. 18 ; Mark i. 16 ; Luke v. 3 ; John xxi. 3. 



16 JESUS CHRIST 

form an inner circle of friends and pre- 
ferred disciples. 

All these people lived a life very dif- 
ferent from our own, a life of which it is 
almost impossible for us to form a just 
idea. With us existence is a struggle; 
with them there was no need to fight for 
life. They had no necessities to satisfy: 
they required little food, and were con- 
tent with anything. There were no 
rigors of climate, — nature was generous ; 
and as they were seldom in the house, they 
felt no need that their homes should be 
beautiful. The earliest disciples who sur- 
rounded the Master formed a group of 
confiding friends, living from day to day, 
laying up nothing in store, since the king- 
dom of God was at hand, and asking 
nothing more than the morrow's bread. 

They were poor, and yet happy : as 
they possessed nothing, no one could 
deprive them of anything; they were 
therefore without care, and suffered no 
privation. With us, the poor man has 
much difficulty in making for himself his 
small place in the sunshine. There the 
poor enjoyed the flowers, the shade, — all 
nature, which was theirs as much as any- 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 17 

body's. The thought of communism came 
naturally to the mind, — not in order that 
every one should be rich ; quite the con- 
trary. " Riches are an evil thing," they 
would say; "poverty is a good. It is best 
to give away the little that one has. 
Neither liberty nor happiness depends on 
what one has or has not." These doc- 
trines were in the air. In the preaching 
of those days Jesus would speak of them, 
and he already practised Essenian com- 
munism. One disciple had charge of the 
common purse ; it was replenished by 
gifts brought by the new members or by 
some who were richer than the others. 
Among those who heard the teachings of 
Jesus were some who were led to the 
point of giving up everything and leaving 
all things to follow him, solemnly promis- 
ing never to leave him ! 

How little all this was in appearance ! 
How humble and small it all was ! A few 
dreamy and ignorant Oriental souls, know- 
ing nothing either of the size of the world 
or the political power of the Csesars, 
nothing of the most elementary philosophy 
or of the law of the universe ; expecting 
the kingdom and seeing everywhere the 

2 



18 JESUS C HEIST 

signs of its approach ; believing that heaven 
is above, and hell below, and the earth in 
the middle. And these souls were un- 
settled, disquieted, half unbelieving, even 
in the things that they knew and believed. 
And when one thinks that it is they who 
have transmitted Jesus to us, that we 
know Jesus only through their instrumen- 
tality, and that the little that they have 
told us of him, so imperfectly and incom- 
pletely, has overturned and changed the 
world ; when one realizes that it is by 
what they have said that we live and die 
(for the gospel is the best that men have 
by which to learn to live well and die 
well), and that no one has found anything 
else, that we cannot do without it, — then 
the teaching of Jesus, his word, his per- 
son, all his being, expand to inconceivable 
proportions, and the certitude of a divine 
message, a divine revelation, a word come 
down from heaven, and a being come down 
from heaven, forces itself upon us, domi- 
nates us, overwhelms us with its evidence. 
For, after all, everything comes from him. 
— our laws, our morals, our civilization, 
all our wisdom and our newest ideas; 
and those who reject Jesus, blaspheme 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 19 

and deny him, still are subject to his in- 
fluence, and in spite of themselves in one 
relation or another remain his disciples ; 
and, on the other hand, misguided Chris- 
tians, full of intolerance and fanaticism, 
orthodox hypocrites and the proud of all 
denominations, and the priests of all com- 
munions, also exalt him, since they call 
themselves by his name; and it is even 
the case that those who senselessly throw 
down his cross, thinking themselves to be 
working for liberty and truth, are often 
impelled into error by an unrecognized 
motive of generosity, which by that very 
quality has its roots in the evangelical 
and Christian spirit. 

Whatever, then, may be one's judgment 
of the Gospels and their authenticity, it 
remains true that there was a personality 
of incomparable power concerning whom 
these books were composed. The whole 
sum of facts and ideas connected with 
Jesus, which caused the creation of the 
Church, the activity of the apostles, the 
enthusiasm of the early martyrs, proves 
the appearance in the first century of a 
being whose influence upon those who 
knew and loved him was colossal. 



20 JESUS CHRIST 



CHAPTER II 

THE LANGUAGE OF JESTJS 

JESUS wrote nothing, and he appears 
not to have taken the smallest pre- 
caution to secure the preservation of his 
words. This was perfectly natural. No 
one in the Jewish world of Palestine had 
his mind turned to the composing of books. 
Why write them? The world was about 
to come to an end ; and, in fact, the Apoca- 
lypses, which are the only remaining Pal- 
estinian works of that time, are short tracts 
solely designed to describe the end of all 
things and prepare men's minds for the 
final catastrophe. 

People also wrote letters, but only occa- 
sionally. St. Paul did not compose one 
line for the future ; he wrote not one word 
with the intention that it should last. He 
was too well convinced that he was living 
in the last days of history. As to the 
Gospels, it was not until much later that 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 21 

men thought of composing them. To write 
was to will to preserve, to take thought for 
the morrow. Certainly Jesus took thought- 
for the future of his work, but it was by 
committing it to the apostles ; and he 
seems not to have considered that the 
apostles themselves might have need to 
confide it to those who should succeed 
them. 

How did the apostles retain the mem- 
ory of Jesus' words ? How were his words 
preserved intact, after being for a long 
time transmitted from lip to lip, no one 
so much as thinking of fixing them by 
writing ? Simply by one of those feats of 
memory which the scarcity of manuscripts 
made an absolute necessity. The preser- 
vation of the maxims of the Rabbis in the 
Talmud offers precisely the same phenome- 
non ; and this explanation is the right one, 
because it is the only one possible, and 
there is not the slightest doubt that the 
sayings of Jesus have come down to us 
in their authentic form. 

His sayings have so peculiar a turn, so 
original a character, that no one can mis- 
take them, and one can easily authenticate 
the very special form which he gave to his 



22 JESUS CHRIST 

thought; we may almost speak of the 
style of Jesus as if he had himself held the 
pen. And yet he not only wrote nothing, 
but we have not even his words in the 
language in which they were spoken. We 
have said that one of the apostles made a 
collection of the sayings of Jesus in the 
original tongue, and that this collection is 
lost. Yet, notwithstanding this loss, we can 
still judge of the form which Jesus gaA~e 
his thought, so forcible and characteristic 
is the imprint which his personality put 
upon the least of his utterances. Each 
one of them is in some way inimitable, of 
an unique originality. The words of Jesus 
are certainly his own, and can be those 
of no other. Hillel, the elder Gamaliel, 
Shammai, also wrote nothing ; and perhaps 
by collecting the authentic maxims of each 
of these doctors, one might characterize 
their method of teaching and the form 
which they gave to their aphorisms. At 
all events, it can be done in the case of 
Jesus. 

It is true that as soon as the form is 
in question, Ave must set aside the long 
discourses of the fourth Gospel, for, as is 
generally admitted, these discourses are 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 23 

given to us in a language peculiar to the 
author of the book. If the thought is that 
of Jesus, the style is not his. We have 
therefore not to speak of them here. 1 

As to the Synoptics, they reproduce with 
admirable fidelity the very expressions used 
by Jesus. Still, I should not dare to say 
that the long discourses are textual. I do 
not believe that Jesus spoke in very long 
discourses. He developed little, and the 
brevity of his utterances, the clearness of 
his judgments, show that he sought above 
all things precision in conciseness. His 
style is eminently the lapidary's style. He 
spoke in short paragraphs, which, being 
brought together, formed the discourses 
which we find in the Gospels. The Ser- 
mon on the Mount, for example, was put 
together- by tradition ; its different parts 
are not necessarily connected, and this ser- 
mon was never pronounced just as it 
stands. It is simply a summing up of 
Jesus' mode of teaching during a certain 
period of his ministry. Jesus did like all 
the Rabbis, none of whom was an orator 

1 Nevertheless there are to be found in the fourth 
Gospel a number of sayings of Christ of which the 
form is precisely that which the first three give. 



24 JESUS CHRIST 

in the modern sense of the word, — one 
who aims at eloquence. 

The Rabbis, wandering Essenes or others, 
lived in small groups. No one among 
them wrote ; they conversed in public and 
among themselves ; they formulated their 
thoughts in short aphorisms easy to re- 
member. These sentences might be either 
purely moral precepts, or interpretations of 
the Law, or even individual opinions on 
divers casuistical points. Jesus did like 
the others. He abolished nothing, he ful- 
filled; and his aphorisms came from his 
lips in incomparable form, finished, perfect. 

If he did not precisely preach sermons, 
it yet sometimes happened that he spoke 
long at a time; but he did not set forth 
ideas logically linked together according 
to a plan thought out and fixed in advance. 
The custom of the Rabbis was to express 
themselves either in clear, well-defined 
sentences which left no doubt of their sig- 
nification, or, on the contrary, in enigmati- 
cal utterances which excited attention by 
the desire to find their meaning, which 
they aroused. Jesus, whose words were 
often fragmentary, made use of both forms ; 
with them he clothed entirely new ideas, 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 25 

and gave them an expression of finished 
perfection. 1 

Searching thus for the most exact term, 
the most striking word, the best figure, 
Jesus came to employ unique expressions 
with precision and truth. He gave to the 
idea its final form. I will cite only one 
example. The Pharisees had often spoken 
of Providence before Jesus began to teach, 
but faith in Providence became definitive 
only on the day when he said, "Not a 
sparrow shall fall to the ground without 
your Father;" 2 " The hairs of your head 
are all numbered." 3 

He adopted for his sententious utter- 
ances two forms particularly well adapted 
to engrave them upon the memory, and of 
these he was very fond, — antithesis and 
paradox-. 

1 We do not mean to say that Jesus never spoke 
except in this manner. There were in his discourses, 
especially toward the close of his ministry, passages 
of sublime tone, whose elevation recalls and surpasses 
the most magnificent apostrophes of the old Prophets, 
and which have no relationship with the brief and 
somewhat dry maxims of the Doctors of the first cen- 
tury. But it is certain that we have in the short, pre- 
cise sentence one of the forms which by preference 
Jesus gave to his thought. 

2 Matt. x. 29 ; Luke xii. 6. 

3 Matt. x. 30 ; Luke xii. 7. 



26 JESUS CHRIST 

Antithesis is continually in his mouth. 
For examples of it, one might cite more 
than half his teachings. Paradox, which 
excites and sustains the attention, is also 
frequent : " Whosoever hath, to him shall 
be given; but whosoever hath not, from 
him shall be taken away even that which 
he hath." 1 "If any man cometh unto me 
and hateth not his own father and mother 
and wife and children and brethren and 
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
cannot be my disciple." 2 " Rejoice and 
be exceeding glad," in persecution. 3 " I 
am not come to bring peace, but a sword." 4 
" He that is not for me is against me." 5 
Sometimes it is only an exaggeration, — the 
faith which moves mountains, 6 the camel 
that passes through the eye of a needle. 7 
He also liked plays upon words : " Thou 
art Peter, and upon this rock (petra) I will 
build my church." 8 " He who will save 
his life shall lose it. He who will lose 
it for my sake shall save it." 9 " Let 

1 Matt. xiii. 12 ; Mark iv. 25. 2 Luke xiv. 26. 

3 Matt. v. 12 ; Luke vi. 23. 

* Matt. x. 34 ; Luke xii. 51. 

5 Matt. xii. 30 ; Luke xi. 23. 6 Matt. xii. 21. 

7 Matt. xix. 24 ; Mark x. 25 ; Luke xviii. 25. 

8 Matt. xvi. 18. 

9 Matt. xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24, xvii. 33. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 27 

the dead bury their dead." 1 The fisher- 
men of the lake become " fishers of men." 2 

By all these methods, designed to at- 
tract attention, Jesus shows himself the 
ingenious Rabbi, knowing how to captivate 
his hearers, to aid their memory, provoke 
their reflection ; and always with a mar- 
vellous simplicity. 

It often happened that he put his max- 
ims into figurative form; for example, 
" The lamp of the body is the eye." 3 Fig- 
urative language was in fact the habitual 
and almost constant form of his thought. 
He seldom made use of abstract terms. 
His incessant endeavor was to be under- 
stood by his hearers. He puts himself at 
their level ; he varies his utterances ; some- 
times he gives striking examples ; some- 
times he-uses words so simple as to be almost 
infantine ; sometimes the expressions are 
half veiled; everywhere his object is the 
same, — to awake attention and gain souls. 
It is the picture that dominates ; from the 
simple illustration of his thought by an ex- 
pressive word to the long enigmatic para- 
bles, he always speaks in pictures, and 

1 Matt. viii. 22 ; Luke ix. 60. 2 Luke v. 10. 
3 Luke xi. 34. 



28 JESUS CHRIST 

best of all he loves to put warnings in 
this form. 1 

Comparisons, properly so called, by 
which he reproves, censures, exhorts, are 
very numerous. 2 In this method we must 
see one of the secrets of his authority. 
Jesus shows and does not demonstrate. 
He proposes divine verities, certain that 
that which is right and true will prove 
itself by showing itself. This again is one 
of the reasons for the sententious and axi- 
omatic form in which he continually ex- 
presses himself. Finally, when the thought 
which he is about to give out appears to 
him particularly important, he precedes it 
with the words, Amen ! Amen ! that is, 
Verily! Verily! 

It is needless to say that this perfection 
of form was not improvised. We said in 
our first volume that Jesus must have pre- 
pared himself to speak in public. If he 
certainly applied to liimself his precept, 
" Be not anxious what ye shall say, for the 

1 Matt. v. 25, vii. 3, 10, ix. 16, 17, xxiv. 45; Luke 
viii. 16, xi. 33, xir. 7-11, xviii. 9-14, xiv. 28-33, xvii. 
7-9. 

2 Matt. v. 13, 14, vi. 22, xi. 16-17; Mark iv. 26-29; 
Matt. xiii. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 29 

Holy Ghost will show you how ye ought 
to speak," 1 none the less did he carefully 
prepare certain parts of his teaching. The 
Lord's Prayer must have been the result of 
a preparation like that which the Pharisees 
made for the prayers which they composed 
for the use of their disciples. John the Bap- 
tist too composed a prayer for his disciples. 
To represent the form of Jesus' teach- 
ing as spontaneous is either to believe it 
to have been fortuitous or else to make of 
it a mechanical revelation, a dictation of 
the Holy Spirit, as people used formerly to 
suppose was the case with the books of 
the Bible. The form which Jesus gave 
his utterances was predetermined ; he had 
reflected upon it ; with wonderful tact he 
had put in operation the gifts which God had 
given him. Compare his figures with those 
of his brother James. What a resemblance 
and what a difference ! Resemblance, for 
of all the Biblical writings, James's style 
most nearly resembles his, which is not 
surprising, since they were brothers. But 
yet what a difference between them ! The 
passage in James about the tongue, 2 to 

1 Mark xiii. 11 ; Matt. x. 19; Luke xii. 11. 

2 James iii. 1-12. 



30 JESUS CHRIST 

cite only this one, is full of insufficient 
metaphors, accumulated images, tasteless 
and too abundant. With Jesus the image 
is perfect, always lofty, always adequate. 
His language is indeed that of the Orient, 
but without one of those incoherences which 
are so constant with Orientals, and with 
which they concern themselves so little. 
Jesus was concerned to find the finished 
form as well as all the rest. 

Thus the parables, with their rich teach- 
ings, in which so many details are inten- 
tional and have their signification, were 
certainly not improvised. On the con- 
trary, they are composed with consummate 
art. We may say of them that they haA~e 
not a word too much or too little. Clear- 
ness, simplicity, conciseness, are what dis- 
tinguish them. The naturally figura- 
tive turn of Jesus' thought found in 
these little stories its natural expression. 
People say that the parable was already in 
use among the Orientals. That is true of 
the Hindoos, but it is not entirely true of 
the Jews. The figurative stories of the 
Old Testament l have only an external re- 
semblance to the parables of Jesus Christ. 

1 Jud. ix. 8 ff. ; 2 Sam. xii. 1 ff. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 31 

Still, the Rabbis of his time did make use 
of this mode of teaching. The Talmud 
cites a considerable number of the parables 
of Hillel and Shammai. Jesus did like 
them. 

It is interesting to remark that he did 
not begin by relating parables. In his 
mode of speech he made development, as in 
all the rest. The Sermon on the Mount, 
that is to say, the beatitudes, the laws and 
promises of the coming kingdom, precepts 
easy to understand, figures of an extreme 
simplicity, like that of the mote and the 
beam, 1 of agreeing with the opposing party, 2 
grapes gathered from thorns and figs from 
thistles, 3 the houses built either on the 
rock or the sand, 4 — such was the first 
form of imagery in the teachings of Jesus. 
They are nothing more than metaphors ; 
they are not yet true parables. The first 
of the parables properly so called are those 
of the kingdom. There remain to us 
eight of them : 1. The sower ; 5 2. the 
wheat and the tares ; 6 3. the grain of 

1 Matt. vii. 3. 2 Matt. v. 25. 

8 Matt. vii. 16. 4 Matt. vii. 24-27. 

5 Matt. xiii. 4 ff. ; Mark iv. 3 ff. ; Luke viii. 5 ff. 

6 Matt. xiii. 24 ft. 



32 JESUS CHRIST 

mustard seed ; l 4. the seed thrown into 
the ground: 2 5. the leaven; 3 6. the 
treasure hidden in the field : 4 7. the 
pearl of great price ; 5 8. the net cast into 
the sea. G Here Jesus draws almost all 
his comparisons from nature. His parable 
has already its finished, perfected form. 
It is a little drama, with its denouement, 
a true fiction, but one that never tran- 
scends historic probability. 

At a later time Jesus changed both the 
form and the matter of his parables. He 
borrowed his comparisons from man him- 
self, and the most profound feelings of his 
soul. Furthermore, he did not always 
give a symbolic example, but simply gave 
an example to avoid. Sixteen of the 
parables of this second period have come 
down to us : 1. The two debtors ; " 2. the 
unforgiving servant ; 8 3. the good Samari- 
tan; 9 4. the friend coming at midnight; 10 
5. the man whose fields had brought forth 
much ; u 6. the marriage supper : 12 T. the 

" Matt. xiii. 31 ff. ; Mark vr. 30 ff. 

2 Mark iv. 2<3 f. 3 Matt, nil 33. 

* Matt. xiii. 44. 5 Matt. xiii. 45 f . 

6 Matt. xiii. 47 f. 7 Luke vii. 40 fE. 

8 Matt, xviii. 23 ff. 9 Luke x. 25 f . 

M Luke si. 5 f . n Luke xii. 16 f . 
12 Luke xii. 35 f. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 33 

barren fig-tree ; 1 8. the great supper ; 2 
9. the lost sheep ; 3 10. the lost drachma ; 4 
11. the prodigal son ; 5 12. the unjust 
steward; 6 13. Lazarus and the rich man; 7 
14. the unjust judge ; 8 15. the Pharisee 
and the Publican ; 9 16. the laborers in 
the vineyard. 10 At the close of his min- 
istry Jesus resumed his parabolical teach- 
ings about the kingdom of God. There 
remain to us six prophetic similitudes of 
this epoch, of which we shall speak in our 
third volume ; in them Jesus announces 
his return and the last judgment: 1. The 
talents, 11 or the minee ; 12 2. the two sons ; 13 
3. the husbandmen ; u 4. the marriage of 
the king's son ; 15 5. the ten virgins ; 16 
6. the sheep and the goats. 17 

The parabolic teaching of Jesus has an 
extreme - importance ; we believe that it 
is in the parable that we must search 

1 Luke xiii. 6 f . 2 Luke xiv. 15 f. 
3 Matt, xviii. 12 f ; Luke xv. 3 f . 4 Luke xv. 8 f . 

5 Luke xv. 11 f. 6 Luke xvi. 1 f. 

7 Luke xvi. 19 f. 8 Luke xviii. 1 f. 

9 Luke xviii. 9 f . 10 Matt. xx. 1 f . 

11 Matt. xxv. 14 f . 12 Luke xix. 12 f. 

1 3 Matt. xi. 28 f . 

14 Matt. xxi. 33 f . ; Mark xii. 1 f . ; Luke xx. 9 f. 

15 Matt. xx. 1 f . 16 Matt. xxv. 1 f . 
17 Matt. xxv. 3 f. 



34 JESUS CHRIST 

for the real matter of his thought. When 
he had reflected at length upon a subject 
and had arrived at a clear and definite 
idea, the evolution of his thought having 
reached its outcome, he composed a parable 
by which he gave a finished and complete 
form to a doctrine equally finished and 
complete. Thus it is that, after having 
for a long time taught that the Heavenly 
Father pardons those who pardon, remits 
the sins of whosoever consents to overlook 
the sins that have been committed against 
him, he composed the parable of the un- 
forgiving servant, which expresses in 
picturesque form his true doctrine on 
this important subject. Hence it results 
that to know the final thought of Jesus 
we must study his parables, and that by 
placing them as much as possible at their 
true date, we get a veritable history of his 
religious ideas. 

Let us now seek to determine the true 
character of the form given by Jesus 
to his teaching. It seems to us that it may 
be defined by the word " spiritualization." 
He fulfils the past by transforming it, and 
this simply by the power of his own 
spiritual life. Jesus, by his ideas, his 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 35 

knowledge, his language, is of his own 
time and country. But in him there 
reigns an intense religiosity, a profound 
and unalterable sense of the continual 
presence of God, which transforms every, 
thing, sees through everything, and gives 
to each a special reality and value. 

He has no preconceived ideas, whether 
critical, literary, historical, or metaphysical. 
He has nothing to do with such things. 
He makes no use of the distinctions of 
modern thought, and he accepts all the 
concrete and realistic terms of his time and 
people. He accepts, without the least idea 
that it is open to discussion, all that re- 
lates to angels and Satan. He admits the 
fact of demoniac possession; he could not 
do other than admit it, or he would not 
be of his own time. The same may be 
said of eschatological notions and of all the 
old Judaism. It comes from God, he says ; 
the Torah is the code of a divine religion. 
But he spiritualizes everywhere, because his 
religious consciousness is always alive, 
and it assimilates the contents of the 
book only by virtue of its affinity with 
the contents. If a text has authority with 
him by virtue of It is written, and that 



36 JESUS CHRIST 

because he is a Jew and of his time, the 
text also and especially enjoys a higher 
authority, that which it holds in virtue 
of the sentiment which it expresses. To 
his mind the arbitrary precepts of the 
Law undoubtedly came from God as well 
as all the others, and yet he pays no atten- 
tion to them because he sums up the whole 
Law in love to God and to one's neighbor. 

This continual spiritualization is, then, 
the proper character of Jesus' language. 
If the maxim " The style is the man " is 
not always true, it is absolutely so of 
Jesus, because there is an entire harmony 
between his thought and the language of 
which he made use in expressing it. This 
is why the study of Jesus' method of 
teaching has an exceptional importance, 
which springs out of the very heart of 
his teaching. 

Jesus had not a doctrine like the 
philosophers, like Plato or Aristotle. He 
did not come to demonstrate new truths 
as destined to supersede the old truths ; 
but he did come to draw a new life out of 
the old forms, while keeping the forms 
such as they had been ; and his language 
was always thoroughly Judaic and Oriental, 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 37 

although we hear it only through the Greek 
translations of the disciples. 

Such, then, was the language of Jesus, 
and such were the beginnings of that 
ministry which was so soon to end in the 
disaffection of the multitude, the hatred 
of the Pharisees, unpopularity. It began 
in hope and joy. Jesus by his word 
exercised an extraordinary, an immense, 
ascendancy over the people. His renown 
was great, and the sympathy of the 
multitudes became absolutely his, 

If it was a limited circle in which he 
was active, if he was almost unknown in 
Jerusalem, still his Galilean discourses 
were fully accepted and aroused general 
approbation. His only weapon was the 
word, inviting the consent of the heart. 
No doubt he attacked the official repre- 
sentatives of Judaism, but the people ap- 
proved, and true Pharisees approved also. 

What a unique appearance was that of 
this gentle and compassionate Rabbi, — a 
sort of Pharisee, to be sure, but a very new, 
very liberal Pharisee, who spiritualized 
everything he said, and transformed every- 
thing he touched ! A sort of Essene, no 
doubt, but only in appearance, for no one 



38 JESUS CHRIST 

was more irreconcilably than he the ad- 
versary of narrow legalism and exterior 
purifications. 

We picture to ourselves the Master and 
his disciples going about in Galilee, or 
perhaps in the common room of their 
little house; there they sit after the 
Eastern manner, squatting close together 
upon a rug, turban on head, and wrapped 
about with their long mantles. Sometimes 
they talk and put questions one to another : 
sometimes after a long silence Jesus 
slowly utters a sententious saving and 
then is again silent. The disciples, with 
eyes half closed and intent manner, listen 
and remember. Their impeccable, faultless 
memories will never lose a word. The 
Master's utterance is now as if graven on 
their hearts ; more than that, it may well 
be that he will often repeat it. At last 
the Master speaks again; this time to 
whisper softly the explanation of the 
parable which a little while before he had 
spoken at the lakeside, under the brilliant 
light of the noonday sun ; and he adds, 
"What I say unto you in secret, that 
proclaim upon the housetops." 1 

i Matt. x. 27 ; Luke xii. 3. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 39 



CHAPTER III 

THE EABLIEST TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

JESUS began his work as a Rabbi, as an 
itinerant preacher, as a physician of 
soul and body ; such were already a certain 
number of his contemporaries. One is at 
first tempted to say that there is nothing 
more than this in the words of Jesus and 
the acts which he did. He seemed to have 
no fixed plan. He lived from day to day. 
The cares of each day were sufficient for 
him ; he performed the work which pre- 
sented itself, replying to the questions that 
were asked him, and uttering the sayings 
which were suggested by the circumstances 
of the moment. 

People often came to consult him, as 
they would have consulted a Doctor of the 
Law. He laid down the law ; he spoke 
with authority : his opinions were good to 
know, and he gave his views exactly as 
Hillel or Shammai might have done and 
actually did. 



40 JESUS CHRIST 

He took his own wherever he found it. 
On the subject of divorce, for example, 
he ranged himself beside Shammai. 1 On 
other and more numerous points he holds 
rather the views of Hillel; thus what 
he says about justice, 2 which indeed is 
also to be found in Tobias, 3 was one of 
HUM's well-known formulas, 4 and his 
words about judging, " Judge not, that ye 
be not judged," 5 were given by Hillel 
under this form : " Judge not thy neigh- 
bor until thou findest thyself in his posi- 
tion." 6 

Sometimes Jesus would reproduce what 
the Old Testament had already said ; some- 
times he would give a new opinion ; but 
that which seems new to us was not al- 
ways such, and no doubt it often occurred 
that he repeated words which he had heard 
in the synagogue. 

He reprehended the law of retaliation; 
it would appear that no one had done 
so before him. 7 He condemned usury. 8 
Deuteronomy had already condemned it, 

i Matt. v. 31, 32 ; Luke xvi. 18. 

2 Matt. yii. 12 ; Luke vi. 31. 3 Tob. i. 16. 

4 Babyl. Talmud, Shabbath, 31 a. 5 Matt. vii. 1. 

6 Vide Babyl. Kethuboth, 105 b. 

< Matt. v. 38. 8 Matt. r. 12. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 41 

but usage authorized it. He said that one 
should not make a display of devotion, 
like the Pharisees, — that one should per- 
form his alms in secret; 1 it had already 
been said. 2 The maxim " If a man smite 
thee on the one cheek, turn to him the 
other " 3 recalls a similar saying of Jere- 
miah; 4 but the counsel to pluck out the 
eye and cut off the hand which cause to 
offend 5 has nowhere an analogue, to our 
knowledge. 

The duty of loving one's enemies 6 re- 
calls similar words to be read in the Tal- 
mud, 7 and it cannot be said that the 
Talmudists borrowed these passages from 
the Gospel, for a wall of separation was 
built up between the synagogue and the 
church down to the thirteenth century, 
and down to that epoch neither exercised 
any influence upon the other. 

"Forgive and you shall be forgiven," is 

1 Matt. vi. l ff. 

2 Eccles. xvii. 18, xxix. 15 ; Babyl. Chagiga, 5 a ; 
Bababathra, 9 b. Cf . Isa. i. 11 f ., lviii. ; Hos. vi. 6 ; Mai. 
i. 10 f ., which prepared the way for such precepts. 

3 Matt, v. 39 f . ; Luke vi. 29. 4 Lam. iii. 30. 

5 Matt. v. 29-30, xviii. 9 ; Mark ix. 47, 48. 

6 Matt. v. 44; Luke vi. 27. 

7 Babyl. Shabbath, 88 b. ; Joma, 23 a. 



42 JE8UB CHRIST 

iii the Old Testament. 1 ' ; Be merciful as 
tout heavenly Father is merciful," also 
recalls an almost identical rabbinical utter- 
ance : 2 and upon almsgiving, pity, good 
works, kindness of heart, disinterestedness. 
the duty of seeking for peace. Jesus said 
only what the Old Testament had already 
said. 3 and what the synagogue around 
him repeated, what he had heard from his 
childhood. 4 

He sanctified celibacy, as the Essenes 
did : like them, he forbade oaths, and it is 
not to be doubted that he borrowed this 
interdiction from Essenism. 

For that matter, this question was much 
discussed. Even those who allowed the 
oath recognized cases where it was to be 
forbidden. These cases were many: still 
more numerous, however, were those where 
it was permitted. Under such circum- 
stances it was an oath : under such others 
it was not an oath, even though men had 
solemnly sworn. 5 

1 Lev. xix. 18; Prov. xx. 22 ; Eccles. xxviii. 1 f. 

2 Siphre, 51 t>. 

3 Deut. xxiv., xxv. , xxvi. etc.; Isa. lviii. 7; Prov. 
xix. 17 ; etc. 

* Pirhe AbotA, 1 Jems. Peah, i. 1 ; Babyl. Skabbath, 
63 a. 

5 Talmud, Sheolith, ch. 3, 4 ; and Berakoth, f ol. 5-5. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 43 

Jesus swept away all this casuistry by 
saying, " Swear not at all." 1 As to the 
law, it forbade only perjury. 2 

Jesus, then, was a Rabbi, and a Rabbi of 
his own time. Many of his precepts ex- 
plain themselves when one puts himself 
into the surroundings in which they were 
spoken, and compares the identical words 
uttered by the Doctors of his time. The 
questions which were put to him at Jerusa- 
lem, in the Temple, in the very latest days 
of his life, concerning tribute, concerning 
marriage in the future life, those which he 
himself at that time asked concerning the 
Davidic origin of the Messiah, are samples 
of the questions which- Pharisees of differ- 
ent shades of thought put to one another. 

But when Jesus did not reply to the 
questions which were put to him as Rabbi, 
he was following his habitual method : to 
abolish nothing, to fulfil everything. He 
himself explained his attitude by the cele- 
brated maxim, "Every scribe instructed 
in the things of the kingdom is like a 
man who is a householder, who bringeth 

where are mentioned all the oaths touched upon by 
Jesus ; the Temple, Jerusalem, are mentioned, 
i Matt. v. 34. 2 Lev. xix. 12 ff. 



44 JESUS CHRIST 

forth from his treasury things new and 
old.'* ! This expression, to be under- 
stood, should not be separated from that 
other formula, M Abolish nothing ; fulfil all 
things." 

It is true that, at a first glance, one is 
tempted to believe that Jesus preached two 
classes of truths, — one of them ancient, 
taken from the Old Testament, which he 
cited just as they were, without change ; 
the other new, discovered by himself, and 
more or less revolutionary. His teachings 
would in that case be a medley of ancient 
traditions which he thought worthy of 
preservation, and truths entirely unknown 
before his day, which he had drawn from 
his own resources ; and in that case we, 
studying his teachings to-day, would have 
to perform a work of separation, saying of 
one precept, " it was new : " of another, •• it 
was old; " here Jesus brought out original 
ideas, there ideas which were not original. 
In fact, a few moments ago we pointed out 
one and another gospel precept which has 
no analogue anywhere ; and others which, 
on the contrary, were well known before 
Jesus' time. But Jesus himself did not 

1 Matt, xiii 52. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 45 

in the least do this, and we must interpret 
his saying about the man who brings forth 
from his treasury things new and old in 
this way: he had studied the religion of 
his people, their sacred books, and of this 
Old Testament, which — it must not be 
forgotten — he read through the medium 
of the theology of his time, he made a 
treasury. This treasury is therefore com- 
posed of things of the past, but it was 
Jesus who made it, and it was he who 
drew from it; and thus these antique 
truths, which were wholly old, became new 
when they had passed through the crucible 
of his personal experience and were ut- 
tered by him. They were at once old and 
new. It is the ancient heritage which he 
gave to his disciples, but not until he had 
transformed it ; the old and the new are 
fused in a higher unity, nothing is abol- 
ished, all is fulfilled. 

This method of Jesus is eternally true. 
At the present day, for example, Christian 
dogmatics ought to be transformed and 
entirely made over. It never will be 
done in a fruitful way unless Christians 
preserve all the past, blotting out not one 
of the old dogmas, those dogmas which 



46 JESUS CHRIST 

before their time were the spiritual and 
moral force of so many generations, but 
introducing into each one a new life, a 
vital principle, which will rejuvenate and 
transform it. 

It is therefore an error to classify method- 
ically the various points of the teachings of 
Jesus and find a system of doctrine in his 
words, — to say, for example, that he taught 
this about God, that about men. This is 
entirely to misunderstand the unique and 
essential character of Jesus' teaching, 
which was to preach his own person. 1 
He tells us what he is, and gives himself 
out for just what he is. He reveals his 
soul. He tells what he feels, thinks, ex- 
periences, with an entire and absolute 
spontaneity and sincerity. 

It is therefore impossible to put this 
teaching into formulas ; it is necessary to 
rid ourselves of the idea that there is a 
doctrine of Jesus independent of his per- 
son. What Jesus taught was himself. 
He preached himself, — a thing that St. 
Paul would not do. For example, when 
Jesus taught that God is the Heavenly 

1 We shall return to this thought and develop it 
in our last chapter, " The Requirements of Jesus." 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 47 

Father, he was not seeking to inculcate 
a doctrine of God. He did not give out 
any opinions about God, but he told what 
God was to him, and consequently what 
he is absolutely. He was possessed with 
an idea which was to him a certitude, — that 
God was in him, dwelt in him. He heard 
him, talked with him, and God's words 
went sounding through his soul ; and this 
is why he preached himself and asked that 
others should give themselves to him. 1 
From the beginning, and certainly for a 
long time before his public life, he had 
felt himself in close relations with God. 

Jesus, then, preserved all the past ; with 
regard to God, sin, man, the reign of God, 
he repeated what his contemporaries said. 
He drew everything from the Old Testa- 
ment, and repeated Jewish doctrines pure 
and simple ; but he repeated them other- 
wise than had been done before him, 
because he had made them new in his 
own consciousness. 

More than this, he not only transformed 

these precepts, not only gave to them a 

value which makes them seem new, but 

he further, and especially, put them in 

1 Matt. ix. 9. 



48 J£SUS CHE 1ST 

practice. Why. indeed, had not these 
maxims, which were already in the Law 
and on the lips of pious and sincere Phari- 
sees, ■ — why had they not changed the 
world, and how was it that Jesus changed 
it? Because Jesus was the first one to 
practise and live them. We may prove 
that the gospel morality was not itself 
veiy original, we may gather together the 
whole of it from ancient maxims : and yet 
it was only in the first century that these 
transformed the world, made it new, and 
actually recreated it. He not only gave 
the perfect code of the perfect life : he lived 
it. For this reason that in him which was 
striking, that which drew hearts to him, 
was not his charm, as has been said, but 
the perfection of his life, — the fact that he, 
first of all men, was perfect as the Father 
is perfect. 

Let us be more circumstantial, studying 
at yet closer range the spirit of his teach- 
ing, comparing it with that of the men of 
his time. 

The Scribes and Pharisees said that the 
Law was the final authority. In it God 
spoke. In the Torah was the exterior 
commandment, before the letter of which 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 49 

all must bow. It was the word of God in 
the narrowest and strictest sense of the 
word. Jesus would certainly not have 
repudiated this statement. But what did 
the Scribes draw from it ? A servile fear 
of violating a single one of these com- 
mandments ; a subtle interpretation of 
the simplest texts ; a multitude of precepts 
before which they continually trembled in 
the fear of violating them. Here Jesus 
parted company with them. He believed 
in the exterior authority of the Law, but 
he changed it to an interior authority. 
Even during his long years of silent ob- 
scurity he had begun to have sacred 
experiences; and one of them, the foun- 
dation of his religious certitude, was 
communion with God. 

In the depths of his soul he had a secret 
conviction which was to be identified, which 
could not but be identified, with the com- 
mandments of the Law, because, like them, 
it spoke only the truth. He was assured 
of the approbation of his Father ; and 
thus, when he was confronted by the Law, 
which also came from the Father, it was 
not a question of obeying precepts which 
threaten, command, forbid, like the slave 
4 



50 JESUS CERTS T 

who knows not what his master does, and 
who obeys because his master is the strong- 
est, but of keeping the Law by identifying 
it with the inward law, the law of con- 
science, the will of the Father. It was 
not, then, the exterior law to which man 
must submit, but the moral conscience 
regenerated and set free by the Father, 
who has mercy and forgives. 

Jesus left on one side all winch in the 
Law is literal application and minute cas- 
uistry ; he paid no attention to it. It said 
nothing to him, because it remained out- 
side of him, and those things which were 
neither felt nor experienced were as if 
non-existent. But he declared to be eter- 
nal all that is the will of God, all that 
his own soul revealed to him. He found 
in his soul the law of perfection. It was 
already in the Old Testament, "Be ye 
holy ; " but he declared that it could not 
be accomplished simply by fulfilling the 
Mosaic laws. The sentiments of men's 
hearts must be changed. He rose from 
the act to the sentiment which dictated it ; 
it was the sentiment which should be per- 
fect. The thought of evil was as culpable 
as the evil itself; and thus he reached 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 51 

a law as rigorous and as impossible to 
keep as that of the Old Testament, though 
for a different reason. " Unless your right- 
eousness exceeds that of the Scribes and 
Pharisees," he said to his hearers, "ye can- 
not enter the kingdom of heaven." 1 The 
commandment ceased to be limited by be- 
coming an inward command. To be per- 
fect as the Father is was what conscience 
demanded, and it could demand nothing 
less. 

This transformation from the letter to 
the spirit, from the exterior to the inward 
law, from blind and trembling submission 
to free and joyful faith, led Jesus quite 
simply and naturally to an inevitable con- 
clusion, which he early began to preach, — 
that rites have no importance. The Tem- 
ple would pass away, and forms, which 
indeed had been inevitable, were nothing. 
No doubt he did not annul them ; he abol- 
ished nothing. After his departure an 
entire wing of his Church continued to 
profess Judaism; the so-called Judaizing 
Christians went to synagogue and Temple, 
recited the Shema, and, when men ex- 
pressed surprise at this, were able to an- 
1 Matt. v. 20. 



52 JESUS CHRIST 

swer, " Jesus did thus ; " and it was true. 
To the end of his life Jesus went to the 
synagogue. He celebrated the Jewish 
Passover on the eve of his death. He 
did, indeed, institute Baptism and the 
Eucharist, but in the earlier days he said 
nothing about these. In his view, inde- 
pendence of conscience ought to be entire. 
Every man is responsible only to his in- 
ward guide. The religious and the moral 
life ought to act and react upon each 
other. 

In the early days of his ministry, then, 
Jesus taught no religious practice. His 
religion consisted wholly in an immediate, 
personal relation between the soul and the 
Heavenly Father. He placed no interme- 
diate clergy between God and the believer. 
He repudiated all forms which touched 
only the body. 1 He rejected tradition. 

All this was not absolutely new. Simon 
the Just, Jesus ben-Sirach, and Hillel had 
already summed up the Law in the precept 
of righteousness. Philo had preached a 
high moral sanctity, and had held practices 
in slight esteem. Rabbi Johanan had put 
works of mercy above even the study of 
i Matt. xv. 11 f£. : Mark vii. 6 ft. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 53 

the Law. 1 Jesus continued, completed, and 
went beyond these teachers. In his view, 
true worship consisted in having a pure 
heart and treating all men as brothers. 2 
The act was of small importance ; the 
important thing was the inward sentiment 
which inspired it. In this position he was 
no longer a Jew, for to the true Jew the 
rite was everything. Whatever might be 
the inward disposition, it was simply neces- 
sary to put oneself on right terms with 
God by performing the rite. No doubt 
Jesus said that the tithe must be paid, 
even " of mint and anise and cummin," 3 
for the Law ordains it, and he never abol- 
ished one stroke of the letter of the Law ; 
but he rejected the Pharisaic casuistry on 
the observation of the Sabbath, he did not 
abstain -from certain meats, and he did not 
make a point of fasting. It was all one, 
whether or not one practised these exter- 
nal acts. He had no wish to make an 
abrupt change in common usage ; he 
wished only to change men's hearts, 
secure, in advance, that when the heart 
was changed the external change would 

1 Jems. Peak. i. 1. 2 Cf. Jas. i. 27. 

3 Matt, xxiii. 23. 



54 JESUS CHRIST 

follow of itself. He gave no decree doing 
away with one thing, retaining another, 
but he implanted the inward leaven which 
little by little would work through the 
dough, transforming it and making it a 
new material. 

It is hard for us to enter into the spirit 
of such a work, because with our modern 
philosophical notions we can picture to 
ourselves only a pure reform of ideas and 
doctrines, a direct reformation. " This 
is true, do it; that is false, believe it no 
longer ; replace it with this or that new 
belief." But Jesus was of his own time, 
and had nothing to do with ours. He was 
born a Jew ; he was thoroughly religious, 
and imbued with theocratic notions. God 
was the master, he was the Messiah, and 
his purpose was to prepare for the com- 
ing of the Messianic kingdom. Now his 
people with their Law and their prophets 
were tending toward this kingdom. The 
theocracy of Israel would be perfected 
when the kingdom had come. The object 
to reach was its coming. 

How could it be reached ? By making 
an advance upon the past, — a step forward, 
but without rupture, and on the lines of 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 55 

the past. Jesus was certain that the an- 
cient Law had prepared for what he had 
come to do. The people also were prepar- 
ing for the coming of the kingdom by the 
practice of the Law. And they must com- 
plete this preparation by continuing to 
practise it ; but in order to complete and 
fulfil it they must go beyond the letter. 
The members of the kingdom to come 
were called from that moment to be sons 
of God, children of the Father ; and enter- 
ing with him into the relations of children 
with a father, they would be in new 
and higher relations with God. Formerly 
slaves, keeping the commandments literally 
and by compulsion, they would now be 
doing the will of God and filled with his 
Spirit, because they were in personal com- 
munion- with him. 1 

Thus there resulted a new moral obliga- 
tion for every disciple of Jesus. A son of 
the Father, he must serve him, obey him, 
do his will ; but all this service must be 
done by love. He will obey because of 
his confidence ; he has faith in his Father. 
The will of God toward him is an act of 
kindness. New motives unknown till then 

1 Matt. v. 9, 45-48; vi. 6, 8, 9, 14, 26, 32; vii. 11. 



56 JESUS CHRIST 

will be born in bis soul, — love, confidence, 
submission, yielding to the Father's will. 

In this Jesus created a truly new 
religion, and his supreme purpose in creat- 
ing it was to save his people ; that is, to 
prepare them for the coming of the king- 
dom of God. There was never any thought 
in these early teachings of a possible vio- 
lent death in the future, by which Jesus 
purposed to accomplish salvation. He 
simply preached a new relation between 
God and man, a new covenant; and this 
is in fact a new religion. The way of 
salvation which he opened and offered 
was the Father's forgiveness. When the 
Father should have forgiven men, the age 
to come would begin. And the Father 
forgives those who forgive ; 1 he receives 
the penitent prodigal. 

The conditions of entrance into the 
kingdom, then, were repentance, trust, 
a change of heart. He who fulfilled these 
would receive a great reward in the king- 
dom of heaven, provided he had done the 

i Matt. vi. 14 ; Mark xi. 25 ; Matt, xviii. 35 ; Luke 
vi. 37 ; etc. Jesus never attached any other condition 
to the forgiveness of God than the forgiveness which 
men extend to their brethren. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 57 

will of God and put Jesus' teachings into 
practice. The tree would be known by 
its fruit. Those who had loved, forgiven, 
done good to the poor and suffering would 
enter the kingdom. Upon this point 
Jesus' teaching never varied. In a para- 
ble of his latest days he declared that 
those who should be placed at his right 
hand and enter eternal life would be those 
who had fed the hungry, given drink to the 
thirsty, visited those who were sick and in 
prison. The Jews said, Practise the Law 
and you will be worthy of the kingdom. 
Jesus said, Do the will of God and you 
will be the son of God. The Lord's Prayer 
remains the loftiest expression of this high 
conception of the relations of man with 
God, which is the whole of the religion 
first taught by Jesus. We must bear in 
mind, when we study this prayer, that 
Jesus said at the same time that the 
Father knows what things we have need 
of before we ask for them. 1 

The teaching of Jesus in this early 
period is, then, not to be distinguished from 
a large, tolerant Pharisaism, taking a long 
step forward. Most of his aphorisms were 

i Matt. vi. 8. 



58 JESUS CHRIST 

borrowed from the Old Testament or from 
the Rabbis who preceded him. He was 
persuaded that true Pharisees would ap- 
prove of his ideas of reform, just as Luther 
was at first persuaded that he was doing 
the work of a good Catholic, and would be 
approved of by the Church and its rulers. 
In the same way Jesus expected to be 
approved by every one, welcomed by every 
one ; he deemed that he was doing nothing 
but what every true zealot of the Law 
could do and ought to do. Full of confi- 
dence himself, he inspired confidence. He 
had as yet very few disciples, properly so 
called, but he was reaching consciences, he 
was touching hearts ; his word was sink- 
ing deep into men's souls. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 59 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MESSIAH AND HIS WORK 

T N our first volume we affirmed that from 
the beginning of his ministry Jesus 
believed himself to be the Messiah. He 
would not be a Messiah instigating a revo- 
lution, like Judas the Gaulonite or any 
other zealot, but he was the Messiah. 

It would seem at first view as though 
the conviction of his Messianic dignity had 
been of slow growth. In fact, all that we 
have said of him up to this time shows 
simply the work of a Rabbi. He began 
by preaching, like John the Baptist. 
Would he have done so if at that time he 
had believed himself to be any other than 
also a forerunner? More than this, it is 
certain that he did not reveal himself to 
his apostles as Messiah until a much later 
time, only a year before his death. 1 In 
these early days he was simply one of those 
1 Matt. xvi. 13-20. 



60 JESUS CHRIST 

itinerant preachers frequently to be met in 
Palestine at that time, trying to do some 
good, healing the sick, casting out demons, 
preaching the love of the Law, and each 
in his own way preparing for the coming 
of the kingdom. 

All this is true, and nevertheless Jesus 
already at this time (and, as we have shown, 
since the Temptation) had not the slightest 
doubt as to his own person. He was the 
very Messiah. This conviction had been 
forming itself from his youth, and he came 
forth from his desert-testing absolutely 
convinced that the Messianic prophecies 
were to be fulfilled in him, and that he 
was to be the hero of the Apocalypses of 
his people. 

More than this, Jesus never said, like 
John the Baptist, that he was only a pre- 
cursor; and he never limited himself, as 
John did, to arousing Israel to duty. He 
clearly performed a Messianic work. It 
was the Messiah who, in the Sermon on 
the Mount, opposed his "But / say unto 
you" to "Moses has said to you." 1 It 
was the Messiah who declared that John 
the Baptist had no part in the new dispen- 

1 Matt. v. 22, 28, 32, 34, etc. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 61 

sation ; who uttered sovereign menaces and 
promises concerning Bethsaida and Caper- 
naum ; ] who declared himself to be greater 
than Jonas, than Solomon, than the 
Temple and the Temple worship; 2 who 
called himself the Bridegroom, 3 thus justi- 
fying the violation of the Sabbath; who 
forgave the sins of the paralytic; 4 who 
assumed the name Son of Man. 5 

No doubt he said, "The kingdom is 
coming! " and it seems more natural that 
Jesus, believing himself to be the Messiah, 
should have said, " The kingdom is come, is 
present." This is to misunderstand at once 
the Messianic ideas of Jesus' contempora- 
ries, and the views which Jesus held about 
himself. According to Jewish notions, 
the Messiah was to remain for a certain 
time hidden, occupying this time of humili- 
ation in preparing for the Messianic king- 
dom. 6 Now, this is precisely the line of 

i Matt. xi. 21 ; Luke x. 13. 

2 Matt. xii. 41 ; Luke xi. 32. 

s Mark ii. 19 ; Matt. ix. 15 ; Luke v. 35. 

4 Mark ii. 5, and parallel passages. 

6 Mark ii. 10 ; Matt. viii. 20, x. 23 ; etc. 

6 Jerus. Berakhoth, fol. 51 ; Mishna, Sanhedr. 28. See 
Luke xxi. 8; cf. Justin Martyr, Dial, with Tryph. 
chap. viii. 



62 JESUS C HEIST 

conduct which Jesus chose, and which 
during his Galilean ministry he carried 
out. He believed that at this time, in his 
actual earthly life, he had Messianic func- 
tions to exercise. After that the kingdom 
would appear, and then, in this kingdom to 
come, he would be the judging and reign- 
ing Messiah. But he believed that for the 
time (and many of his contemporaries also 
believed him to be the Messiah) he had to 
live a humble and hidden life, the life of a 
prophet and servant of God. During this 
period of poverty and humility he was to 
prepare for the coming of the kingdom of 
which some day, and doubtless very soon, 
he should be the glorious head. This is 
what Jesus was doing in Galilee. 

It was. then, in accordance with Jewish 
notions of his time that Jesus considered 
his first duty as Messiah to be the prepa- 
ration for the coming of the kingdom, — a 
preparation without display, in which he 
should carrv out the desists of God. and 
triumph over the enemies of the Law. 

This preliminary work was to be entirely 
Jewish. It was later that Jesus became 
unsectarian. His present work was to 
prepare Israel alone for the coming of the 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 63 

kingdom. But Israel must be prepared; 
and already at this point he stood apart 
from the Pharisees, who thought that the 
kingdom was to be Israel's by right. 
According to the Apocalypses of the time, 
the pious portion of the nation was ripe 
for Messianic felicity; the nation was 
faithful. Jesus did not think so. It 
needed to be converted, and the kingdom 
would not appear until it was converted. 
It was precisely because Jesus knew 
that upon many points he was not in accord 
with the Pharisees that he did not say 
openly, "I am the Messiah," but limited 
himself to acting as the Messiah. Not 
being in the slightest degree, not in the 
least wishing to be, the vulgar hero which 
his nation was expecting, repudiating all 
political ambition, being persuaded that 
the Jews would not be ready for the king- 
dom until they had become once more the 
true sons of God, he did not proclaim 
himself as Messiah. If he had done so, 
his Messianic conception would have 
clashed with that of the Pharisees, and 
produced a rupture. Jesus desired to avoid 
this ; he wished to convert his people and 
the Pharisees themselves to his ideas. 



04 JESUS CHRIST 

There were many years before him, as 
he hoped. We know that it was not to be 
so, — that, contrary to his expectation, he 
was not to succeed, that a rupture was one 
day to take place. Very soon he came to 
perceive that this was inevitable; but he 
exercised every care to delay it as long as 
possible, and he refrained from saying that 
he was the Messiah, in order to avoid any 
misapprehension. The first thing was to 
prepare the ground; and he would not 
proclaim himself the Messiah until hearts 
had been changed, or at least not until the 
change had been begun. 

We know that nothing of all this was 
destined to take place. The Jews were 
not converted. The Pharisees conspired 
to kill Jesus, and it was when he saw that 
death was near, close at hand, about to 
carry him away while still young, that he 
decided to communicate to the apostles in 
confidence the great secret which they had 
already divined, and that Peter said openly, 
"Thou art the Messiah!" 1 

But let us not anticipate. At the hour 
at which we have now arrived, Jesus 
foresaw nothing of this dreadful eventual- 

i Matt. xvi. 16. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 65 

ity. He was certain of only one thing, — 
final success. He did not know when 
it would come, he did not know how it 
would come; but he firmly hoped that it 
would be by the acceptance of his Messi- 
anic person. His persuasion of success 
never faltered. For the moment, sufficient 
to each day was its evil ; he would not bor- 
row care for the morrow. He would per- 
form the humble and difficult duty of 
to-day. That of to-morrow would perhaps 
be still more difficult, but the triumph 
which could not fail to come some day 
would be the recompense and result of 
these difficult beginnings and of his fidel- 
ity in doing the Father's will. Harvest 
after seed-sowing ; and he would be there 
in the day of harvest. He was preparing 
for the kingdom with difficulty and by 
painful seed-sowing; he would have his 
day of glory, and he expected it on earth, 
in a future which could not be very far 
distant. His reward would be the conver- 
sion of his people. 

Jesus was essentially an optimist. Op- 
timism is one of those original and dis- 
tinctive traits of his character which we 
must set in contrast with the inveterate 
5 



JESCS CHRIST 

ffirimism of liis contemporaries. Even 

with the most pious among them nothing 
in the present was satisfactory. No doubt, 
to them also the future seemed beautiful 
and the kingdom of God near : but their 
hopes were of the earth, earthy, and G ; i 
was far off. He might work later, but he 
was not then manifesting himself. 

Aa foi Jesus, he saw God everywhere. 
he felt his agency in and through every- 
thing ; and this faith made him understand 
the world as something quite other than 
what the nation saw in it. No doubt 
to him also the present world was evil, 
corrupt, wretched: but the constant joy of 
his life, and its serene affirmation, was the 
certainty of the future overthrow of evil. 
of the kingdom of darkness and of the 
devil, the king of this world. The Father 
was living, eternal ; he lived in the Father, 
and the Father lived in him, the Sen. He 
knew, he saw, he believed ; he was certain ; 
there was not the shadow of faltering in 
his faith, particularly in his faith in him- 
self. The Jews with groans of pain were 
awaiting a super-terrestrial and future good. 
Jesus, on his part, shed happiness around 
him, and declared his disciples to be happy 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 67 

from that very moment, because they 
were ready to enter the kingdom ; already 
by anticipation they were in possession 
of it. 

By this unalterable optimism, this affirm- 
ation of the fatherhood of God, in which 
he found the joy of his soul, Jesus did not 
in reality introduce a new spirit ; he carried 
out ancient prophecy. The Jewish theo- 
logians of his time misapprehended the 
true spirit of the old prophetism. They said 
God is far from men, and constructed a 
complicated angelology of which the proph- 
ets knew nothing ; while he preached no 
abstract God, far withdrawn from men, 
but, on the contrary, taught the personal 
communion of the soul with God, the cove- 
nant of God with Israel. The Psalms sang 
in magnificent strains this close communion 
of believers with Jehovah. According to 
the Psalmists, God drew near to the nation 
by the Law. He was not a far-off and 
hidden God ; he was a Father, moved with 
compassion for his children. Those who 
observe the Law are near to him. The 
piety of Jesus had been nourished from 
his infancy on these words of the psalm- 
book of his people, and his soul was thor- 



(38 JESTS CHRIST 

oughly saturated with these high religious 
thoughts. 

Jesus, theu, was au optimist, and he 
preached a moral renovation necessary be- 
fore the coming of the Messianic era and 
the apparition of the kingdom of God ; 
for though the victory was certain, it was 
to be dearly bought: it was imperative 
that evil should be vanquished. Now, 
Jesus had a most lively and profound sense 
of man's sin and wretchedness, and he was 
full of compassion for the suffering. Evil 
under anv of its forms strongly moved him. 
He suffered because of evil, which comes 
from Satan. To vanquish Satan, over- 
throw his throne, should be his Messianic 
work. The day was to come when he 
would say in his unalterable certainty of 
triumph, "I beheld Satan fall as light- 
ning from heaven." : This sublime vision 
haunted him. This was the end to be at- 
tained and which should be attained. 

These visions sustained him in the strug- 
gle ; but the struggle was incessant, and, 
though his communion with the Father 
was an inexhaustible spring of joy, on the 
other hand, the view of the world was a 

1 Luke x. 18. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 69 

constant source of suffering to his loving 
heart. This lively sense of the evil in 
which the world is plunged was certainly 
one of the most potent factors of his 
Messianic vocation. Satan was sure to 
fall, but how powerful he still was ! The 
kings were slaying the prophets, the doc- 
tors were saying and not doing, the good 
were being persecuted, and tears were the 
only and unique portion of the good; in 
short, the world was the enemy of God and 
of his holy ones. 1 

This is why the words "he was moved 
with compassion " are continually repeated 
in the Gospels. Jesus suffered because he 
loved ; hence his incessant activity, and his 
longing to save both the souls and the 
bodies of those who suffer. 

This, then, was to be the Messiah's 
work. It remains for us to point out one 
last trait which distinguishes his idea of 
preparation for the kingdom from that 
taught by the Jewish doctors of his time. 
The Pharisees, observing that nothing 
announced the approaching fall of the 

1 John, passim, i. 10 ; vii. 7; xiv. 17, 22, 27 ; xv. 18 ff. ; 
xi. 8, 20, 33; vii. 9, 14, 16, 25; xii. 31; xiv. 30; xvi. 11 
(cf . 2 Cor. iv. 4 ; Eph. ii. 2). 



70 JESrS CHRIST 

power of the enemies of God (pagans, 
Romans, demons, etc.), concluded there- 
fore that their destruction was to be 
supernatural, that the present world was 
given over to evil, and that the palingenesis 
would come only by a miracle, an obliga- 
tory forced transformation. They said also 
that there would be a breach of continuity 
between the present world and the world 
to come. Now, the prophets had said pre- 
cisely otherwise. In their view there was a 
bond between the present and the future. 
The same was the case with Jesus. With 
the aid of the prophets he corrected what 
he found to be erroneous in the Apoca- 
lypses of his time and in the theology of 
the Pharisees. The bond between the 
present and the past would be found in 
his preaching, his invitation to repentance, 
to a change of heart and life. 

According to the Apocalypses, a sudden 
catastrophe would occur and the present 
world would come to an end ; then heaven 
would descend upon a transformed earth. 
The Apocalypses insist upon a beyond, of 
which the prophets have said nothing ; for 
in their view all that they announced would 
take place in the present world. At this 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 71 

point Jesus parts company with them ; he 
also affirms the beyond, but he believes in 
it differently from his people, differently 
from the Apocalypses of his people. In 
the view of the Jews of his time, the world, 
which is evil, was to disappear, and the 
celestial realities which would follow the 
beyond would be the satisfaction of earthly 
aspirations and longings. The glorification 
of Israel would be a striking vengeance 
of the elect over their enemies. But 
while condemning the world, they did not 
part company with it. The best among 
the Pharisees were saying, " There is not 
much more to hope from human effort, but 
the Law must surely serve to assure us 
good places in the kingdom. Therefore 
we must keep it strictly, not that we may 
do what is right, but that we may acquire 
merit before God." Thus they began to 
lose themselves in a minute casuistry. As 
for the Essenes, they parted company with 
the world by living as ascetics. Jesus also 
spoke of renunciation; and with regard 
to marriage, with regard to money, he 
uttered Essenian precepts, but he added 
that in order to enter the kingdom of God 
one must be born anew, — be regenerated. 



72 JESCTS CHRIST 

Grand and sublime new thought! Ac- 
cording to the Pharisees, whoever observed 
the Law should possess the coming glory. 
This glory would not be the natural conse- 
quence of the events which were occur- 
ring; it would follow as a supernatural 
intervention of God, making Israel to tri- 
umph over his enemies. But Jesus taught 
that man must fight against his own nature 
and be regenerated by the Spirit of God. 

Jesus then apprehended his Messianic 
task in an entirely new manner. It was to 
consist in saving his people, — that is to say, 
in preparing them to enter the kingdom. 
He woufd prepare them and save them by 
making of them a humble, repentant, lowly, 
regenerated people. 

For the accomplishment of this work 
Jesus had faith in his Father's assistance. 
The Father works, and the Son also works, 1 
and by prayer continually renews his spirit- 
ual strength. He therefore made appeal 
with his auditors to these two moral powers 
of which he himself had daily experience, — 
will and prayer. Neither of these ought 
to be checked by considerations drawn 
from the fatal forces of nature and the 

1 John t. 17. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 73 

blind laws which surround us as with an 
iron circle. Prayer is and must remain 
prayer, and one must take the word with 
strictest literalness. On this subject Jesus 
made use of comparisons of a sublime famil- 
iarity. 1 The child of God asks, and no 
explanation ought either to change the 
nature or attenuate the meaning of this 
word " ask." To pray as if one could do 
nothing, to pray with the assurance that 
God can do everything and that he hears 
prayer, that he is love, that he has the 
heart of a Father and that we are his chil- 
dren, — this is what Jesus taught ; this is 
what no consideration drawn from the phys- 
ical world ought to weaken. To this pre- 
cise and clear instruction he joined an 
appeal to the will, to the moral energy, 
and moved men to shame for all their 
weaknesses and cowardice. 

One who was converted was born anew. 
This term excludes all explanation of con- 
version by a mere normal development of 
the former life. Conversion is the true 
moral supernatural ; otherwise it would be 
nothing more than a fortunate evolution 
of the natural man. 

i Luke xi. 5-13 ; xviii. 1-8. 



74 JESUS CHRIST 

In all this early preaching Jesus affirms 
mercy and liberty, for to him sin is a thing 
out of the natural order. It is not a neces- 
sary phase in the development of man ; it 
is that which ought not to be, and some 
day it will be abolished. Let us observe, 
finally, that though Jesus was an optimist 
he was by no means a fatalist in his opti- 
mism, and he did not believe in inevitable 
progress. He made appeal to each man ; 
each individual should be active and make 
progress. Many people to-day believe in 
a general progress of humanity, in the evo- 
lution of the masses toward the light, 
toward the good, toward a future goal 
which will be attained as a matter of neces- 
sity. In the same way the Jews believed 
in a kingdom of God which was in a cer- 
tain way fatal, certain, coming for every 
one. The error which they committed and 
which is also our own, is impugned by the 
facts. There are nations which fall, and 
there are individuals who fall. On the 
other hand, the good does not come of 
itself. It is not a necessary evolution; 
individual heroism makes it triumph. That 
is what Jesus preached when he was pre- 
paring for the coming of the kingdom by 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 75 

the change of men's hearts ; this was what, 
above all, he showed in his life, by being 
the perfect model of that personal heroism 
which nothing checks, and which is sus- 
tained by unalterable faith and hope. 



76 JESUS CHE J ST 



CHAPTER V 

JESUS AND MIKACLES 

/^vUR earliest information concerning the 
ministry of Jesus is this : " Jesus of 
Nazareth- anointed by God with the Holy 
Spirit arAwith power, went about doing 
good anonealing all them who were under 
the power of Satan, for God was with him." 1 
This testimony is of indisputable authen- 
ticity. If it had not been preserved, if 
the Gospels had not related a single cure 
performed by Jesus, we should still have a 
right to suppose it, for he was a Rabbi, 
and in his quality of Rabbi he must have 
exercised the functions of a physician. 
Every Rabbi was a physician ; there were 
no other physicians than the Rabbis, and, 
in a general way, men of consideration for 
piety, to whatever religious party they 
might belong. 

For instance, to heal the sick was one 
of the principal functions of the Essenes. 
1 Acts x. 38. See also Matt. iv. 23. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 77 

The Pharisees also cast out demons ; 2 and 
here again, while exercising the functions 
of a Rabbi, Jesus followed both Essenian 
and Pharisaic customs. It is to be observed 
that the physician depended upon individ- 
ual inspiration ; it was not knowledge that 
fitted him to heal, but piety, all of which 
did not prevent cures being from time to 
time obtained by remedies pointed out by 
the Rabbis, small as was the advance in 
medical science in Palestine in the first 
century. 

But their cures were especially per- 
formed by religious practices, for illness 
was always considered either as the pun- 
ishment of sin 2 or as the act of a demon. 3 
This is why it was the Rabbi, the pious man 
given to religious meditation and dreaded 
by demons, who was capable of healing. 
The Essenes and the Pharisees, as we 
have said, were very much given to the 
expulsion of demons, and they often suc- 
ceeded in this. Jesus admitted that the 
Pharisees cast them out. 4 



1 Matthew xii. 27 ; Luke xi. 19. 

2 John v. 14, ix. 1 f ., 34. 

3 Matt. ix. 32, 33, xii. 22; Luke xiii. 11, 16. 

4 Matt. xii. 27. 



78 JESUS CHRIST 

All maladies, not possessions only, were 
attributed to moral causes ; no one sought 
for a physical cause. To be sure, certain 
medicinal plants were used, but very spar- 
ingly, for the ills with which the sick were 
vexed had before all things a Satanic origin. 
Healing could therefore be only a moral 
act and a moral achievement ; therefore 
the more pious the physician the more skil- 
ful was he to heal. 

It is therefore easy to understand the 
immense reputation which Jesus acquired 
in the Galilean villages. He passed for a 
remarkable physician, precisely because 
he concerned himself with the salvation of 
souls, and never separated the two cures of 
soul and body. Jesus was, above all, held 
to be a very powerful and much dreaded 
exorcist. 1 

No one who is somewhat conversant 
with the history of medicine through the 
ages will be surprised at the close relations 
of medicine and religion in Palestine in 
the first century. To tell the truth, these 
relations had always existed among all 

i Mark v. 12, 15, 17, 33, 36, vi. 50, x. 32. Cf. Matt, 
viii. 27, 34, ix. 8, xiv. 27, xvii. 6, 7, xxviii. 5, 10 ; Luke 
iv. 18, v. 17, viii. 25, 35, 37, ix. 34. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 79 

peoples. No science has developed more 
slowly than that of medicine. 

In Greece, by a unique exception, its 
progress was extremely remarkable. Al- 
most five hundred years before Christ 
Hippocrates created scientific medicine, 
founded upon experience and the obser- 
vation of facts ; but this progress, due to 
the genius of a single man, remained alone. 
The methods of Hippocrates, his very 
name, were unknown in Judea. Outside 
of Greece the physician continued to be 
for centuries what he was in the origin 
of humanity, — a personage surrounded by 
mystery, placing himself in relations with 
Divinity, calling to him favorable spirits 
and driving bad spirits away ; and this view 
of things was current in Palestine in the 
time of Jesus Christ. Why should we be 
surprised that disease was always attributed 
to evil spirits, when in our own day many 
country folk still believe in the reality of 
possession? Are not the sorcerers of the 
present day nearly related to the healers 
of the olden time, and are not the magi- 
cians of the negro tribes of Africa the true 
sons of the physicians of antiquity ? 

The surgeon was in an entirely different 



80 JESUS CHRTST 

position. As there is nothing mysterious in 
a broken leg, and the cause of the ailment 
is known, the surgeon was a personage 
much less esteemed than the physician. 
This was long the case. In France, even 
to the seventeenth century, surgeons were 
classed with barbers and hairdressers, and 
in the time of Louis XIV. the surgeon 
might operate only upon the order and 
under the oversight of the physician. The 
latter was a superior being, who might look 
upon the sick person but would not stoop 
to touch him. He had his mysterious 
processes, and loved to give himself out 
for something supernatural. 

Assuredly, Jesus did not take this atti- 
tude ; but in this as in all other things he 
must be considered in the environment in 
which he lived. In his mind preaching 
and healing stood on the same level. 1 He 
was the physician who gave health to the 
soul, either by reaching it directly by his 
word, or by healing the body which it in- 
habited, for disease came from Satan. It 
was a possession; and whether Jesus 
preached or healed, his end was the same 
in both cases, ■ — it was the soul which he 

1 Matt. ix. 12, 13. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 81 

desired to reach, and Satan whom he was 
fighting. 

It has been said that Jesus was fulfilling 
his Messianic work when he healed the 
sick and occupied himself with them. We 
do not think so. In practising medicine 
he was acting simply as a Rabbi and not at 
all as the Messiah. If he had been acting 
as the Messiah, he would have drawn atten- 
tion to his cures ; he would have put in a 
strong light the marvellous, miraculous 
side of his work, and would have pointed 
to it as a proof of his Messiahship; and 
this he never did. On this point Renan 
has fallen into an error, most surprising on 
the part of a man so well versed in Pales- 
tinian Judaism of the first century. He says 
that Jesus in his quality of Messiah must 
have permitted miracles to be attributed to 
him because the Messiah was expected to 
perform miracles. When he assumed this 
character, he was obliged to submit to cer- 
tain features of it of which he disapproved. 
It was no doubt repugnant to him to ap- 
pear to do miracles which he did not do, 
but he must needs resign himself to it. 
The error is a singular one, for Jesus never 
posed as a miracle-worker, and Renan gives 
6 



82 JESUS CHRIST 

no proof that lie did. If Kenan's assertion 
was correct, lie must have said after per- 
forming a miracle, " Observe this miracu- 
lous deed : it is the proof that I am the 
Messiah." But Jesus simply performed 
miracles as a Rabbi; he healed the sick 
because he was moved with compassion 
toward them, and the irrefragable proof of 
Kenan's error is that Jesus forbade those 
whom he healed to divulge their miracu- 
lous cure. He did not, then, count upon 
the effect produced by the prodigy which 
he had just accomplished to bring about 
his acceptance as Messiah. Once, again, 
every Rabbi was a physician, and the com- 
passion of Jesus, his immense compassion 
for men, moved him to assuage their moral 
and physical ills. This is the whole secret 
of his cures. 

Jesus, then, concealed his miracles ; so 
far as Messianic works were concerned, he 
left them entirely out of the question, do- 
ing them in secret and forbidding that they 
should be spoken of. 1 One day, in spite of 
himself, when a demon recognized him, he 
forbade him to speak of his Messiahship, 

i Matt. viii. 4, ix. 30, 31, xii. 16 f . ; Mark i. 44, vii. 
24 f ., viii. 26. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 83 

for this demon believed in it and knew it 
to be true, because a demon, whose spirit is 
of higher order than the spirit of man, 
knows, divines, understands things that re- 
main unknown by man. 1 

More than this, when Jesus healed a 
sick person he made a point of showing 
that the moral healing was much more im- 
portant in his eyes than physical healing. 
He made a point of saying to the sick per- 
son, " Thy sins are forgiven thee." Pardon 
is the true healing ; the healing of the body 
is nothing other than its symbol. 

This fact is manifested with ample evi- 
dence in the healing of demoniacs. There 
especially the return to health appeared 
clearly to be a victory over sin, — that is 
to say, over the world of darkness and the 
evil spirits who reign there. 

Belief in demons was very general in 
antiquity. The Greeks and Romans, like 
the- Jews, were convinced that evil spirits 
took possession of the bodies of certain 
persons. We have said that all maladies 
were by the Jews attributed to demons, but 
there were certain diseases more evidently 
their work, especially those where the 
i Mark i. 24, 25, 34, iii. 12 ; Luke iv. 41. 



S4 JESUS CHRIST 

patient appears to belong no longer to 
himself (hysterical disturbances, nervous 
maladies, madness), or those of which the 
cause cannot be seen (mutism, deafness). 
These affections were believed to be unde- 
niable cases of possession. Others, leprosy 
for instance, were less evidently maladies 
of Satanic origin ; nevertheless, like the 
others, they came from the world of dark- 
ness. 

Let us now study in detail the methods 
of healing employed by Jesus. The first 
fact is that Jesus acts entirely as a physi- 
cian. He often puts questions like a doc- 
tor who is concerned to inform himself as 
to the gravity of a case. " How long is it 
since this came unto him ? " 1 He asks a 
blind man whose cure he has begun if he 
sees aught. 2 It is the physician informing 
himself and wishing to be informed. On 
that day he healed slowly and by several 
stages. He commanded that food should 
be given the daughter of Jairus ; 3 it was 
as a medical prescription. He made clay 
with spittle. 4 To complete the cure begun, 
he commanded a sick man to wash in a 

i Mark ix. 21. a Mark Yiii. 23; cf. v. 9. 

3 Mark t. 43. * John ix. 6 : Mark yiii. 23. 



DURING BIS MINISTRY 85 

certain pool which he indicated. 1 Once, 
to heal a deaf mute he put his fingers into 
his ears, touched his tongue with saliva, 
breathed a deep sigh, and said the words, 
" Be opened ! " 2 Here the healing was 
slow, difficult, and one may almost doubt 
whether in the end it was actually effected. 
From time to time these difficult healings 
occur. There was a particularly ill-disposed 
and tenacious sort of demon who would 
consent to go out only after the exorcist 
had fasted and prayed. 3 Therefore Jesus, 
who most generally waited to be asked 
before performing a miracle, 4 at times per- 
formed a cure only as the result of effort, 
a veritable moral effort. Notwithstanding 
his great compassion, he even went so far 
as to shun the sick who implored and sup- 
plicated his aid, in order to retire to a soli- 
tude to pray. 

In fact, a cure was not certain. It de- 
pended upon one essential condition, that 
the sick person should have faith, and even 

1 John ix. 6. 

2 Mark vii. 33 f . 

3 Matt. xvii. 21 ; Mark ix. 29. It is possible that 
the mention of the fact is not authentic. 

4 Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4, xvii. 16 ; Mark viii. 22 f ., ix 
18 : Luke ix. 11. 



86 JESUS CHRIST 

that the bystanders should have it too. 1 
When there was faith neither in the per- 
son of the sick nor of those who were 
with him, Jesus did not perform a cure; 
he could not succeed. 2 This was not 
merely refusal on his part, the refusal 
to perform an act which he might have 
performed if he had so willed ; no, it was 
an impossibility. And the converse is true : 
when the multitude were full of enthu- 
siasm and faith, Jesus performed many 
cures, even at a distance and without the 
sick person being present. 

The presence of Jesus sufficed ; it kept 
up a beneficent moral excitement, and pro- 
voked a confidence which put the sick per- 
son into communication with him by the 
intermediary of the multitude. Cases of 
suggestion which much resemble those are 
cited in our own day. The sick person's 
faith or that of the crowd is what performs 
the miracle. Jesus was so much convinced 
of this that he never said, " I have healed 
thee," but "Thy faith hath healed thee.' , 
So, when he used clay to anoint the eyes 

1 "Seeing their faith." Matt. ix. 2; Mark ii. 5; 
Luke v. 20. 

2 Mark vi. 5, 6 ; Matt. xiii. 58. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 87 

of a blind man, 1 when it was enough for 
a woman to touch his garment and be 
healed, 2 he attached no superstitious idea 
to these acts. He said to that woman, as 
to the others, " Thy faith hath saved thee," 
and not u Thy contact with my garment 
saved thee." 

How was the healing produced ? Judg- 
ing by the example just cited, it might be 
the case that it was produced by contact 
with the garment of Jesus, even without 
his knowledge. 3 But in general the sick 
person was healed as a consequence of 
words pronounced by Jesus in a tone of 
command. 4 Doubtless there resulted from 
the tone of his words a moral commotion 
which made easy the return to health of 
him .who had faith. 

As for Jesus himself, it was by prayer 
that he healed. He had a profound and 
glowing faith that his prayer would be 
answered. There is nothing concerning 
which Jesus spoke with more unalterable 
conviction than of the hearing of prayer. 
He had a personal, full, absolute certainty 

1 John ix. 6 ; Mark viii. 23. 2 Mark v. 27, 28. 

3 Mark iii. 10 ; v. 30 ; vi. 56. 

4 Mark i. 25, and passim. 



88 J£SUS CHRIST 

that one can do all things by prayer ; by it 
one acts upon God, and through him upon 
nature itself. 1 

This is why Jesus certainly performed 
true miracles, and did it often; for God 
certainly gave him the answer to his 
prayers, and he often had experience of a 
direct response to his supplications by the 
Father. When he said, " Ask and ye shall 
receive," 2 he drew this observation from 
the depths of his personal experience. He 
had asked and he had received; he had 
knocked at the Father's door, and the 
Father had opened to him the treasures 
of his compassion, and his answers to 
prayer. 

The incontestable authenticity of the 
greater number of the sayings uttered by 
Jesus when healing this or that sick per- 
son, on the occasion of this or that miracle, 
is the irrefutable proof of the authenticity 
of the miracle itself. In our day, in cer- 
tain religious establishments in Switzer- 
land, for example, Christians of ardent 
faith have obtained cures by prayer, cures 
which have been scientifically demon- 

* Matt, xviii. 19, xxi. 21, 22 ; Mark xi. 23, 24. 
2 Matt. vii. 7 ff. and parallel passages. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 89 

strated ; and whoever believes in the power 
of God and the power of prayer believes 
that health may be given back by God to 
a sick person who asks it or for whom 
others intercede. So mnch the more must 
Jesus have obtained such cures. 

We have spoken up to this time only of 
the cures performed by Jesus, but what we 
have said of these may be applied to all the 
miracles attributed in the Gospels to Christ. 
We have not the slightest a priori objec- 
tion to their authenticity. But each one 
must be studied separately, by itself, and 
in the light of a sound criticism; and 
criticism should rest upon this indispu- 
table principle, this final affirmation of 
modern science, — the laws of nature are 
inviolable. 

In our first volume we explained our 
views of the state of men's minds in Pales- 
tine in the first century; of the facility 
with which every one saw miracles every- 
where, and the difference there is in this 
matter between a man of that period and a 
man of our own, who, on the other hand, 
sees none anywhere. This remark must 
be borne in mind; and since it has been 
averred that the laws of nature are invio- 



90 JESUS CHRIST 

lable, it follows that the fact called a 
miracle, if it be authentic, if it really 
took place, can only be a fact which tem- 
porarily lies outside of the known forces 
of nature. 

As Jesus never drew attention to the 
marvellous or inexplicable elements in the 
miracles he performed, it follows — and 
this statement is of the highest impor- 
tance — that he never desired that men 
should see anything magical even in 
his most extraordinary acts. One of the 
victories of the Temptation consisted pre- 
cisely in repudiating every act which by 
an appearance of prodigy might be likely 
to dazzle and amaze the multitude. All 
that seemed like sorcery or magic, every- 
thing which might resemble an act of dex- 
terity designed to arouse astonishment, 
was entirely outside of his method, and 
never had anything to do with the gospel 
as he conceived and preached it. Miracle 
as miracle is foreign to the Christianity of 
Jesus. 

This is all the more remarkable because 
Jesus' disciples and all his contemporaries, 
without exception, looked upon miracles 
from an entirely different point of view. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 91 

They called them signs ; and to their minds 
a divine messenger, and especially the 
Messiah, could only accredit himself by 
performing miracles and also by fulfilling 
prophecy. These two proofs were abso- 
lutely required. Given that the miracles 
were thoroughly authentic and the fulfil- 
ment of prophecy perfectly evident, all 
doubt was dispelled. The disciples, there- 
fore, could only receive a miracle-working 
Messiah. This is easily to be seen from 
many passages in the Gospels, and in con- 
sequence the greatness of Jesus' views and 
the originality of his ideas on this point are 
all the more easy to discern, and. all the 
more certainly authentic. 

It is so true that miracles made no part 
of his - mission that when he cast out a 
demon he forbade the possessed man with 
threats (what threats ? — perhaps of a return 
of his malady) to make known his cure ; 
and twice he refused to perform a miracle, 
because it would be perfectly evident that 
he was its author, being performed before 
the eyes of the Pharisees, the learned men 
of the time. 1 On this occasion he declared 
that the true sign of his mission was his 

1 Matt. xii. 38 &., xvi. 1 ff. ; Mark viii. 11. 



92 JESUS CHRIST 

preaching, as powerful as that of Jonas, 
and his wisdom, as great as that of Solo- 
mon. In the parable of the wicked rich 
man, when the latter, being in torment, 
thought of his five brothers, and asked 
Abraham to send Lazarus to warn them 
that they should not also come into torment, 
Abraham replied : " They have Moses 
and the prophets ; let them hear them. 
If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
neither will they be persuaded if one rise 
from the dead.'' 1 Therefore the miracle of 
miracles, the resurrection from the dead, 
proves less, has less of evidential value, 
than the preaching of Moses and of the 
prophets ; and it follows from this passage 
that, in the mind of Jesus, the truth of his 
preaching, the authenticity of his mission, 
his gospel, in short, are not proved by one 
of his miracles, not even by his own resur- 
rection from the dead. 2 

i Luke xvi. 31. 

2 One passage alone appears to oppose this con- 
stant attitude of Jesus ; namely, the reply to the 
messengers of John the Baptist : " Go tout way and 
tell John the things which ye do hear and see : the 
blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers 
are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are 
raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 93 

When Jesus forbade those whom he 
healed to speak of his miracles, it was as- 
suredly not that we should pass them over 
in silence to-day. This chapter would not 
have been written if we had thus understood 
his words on the subject. Nevertheless 
in that prohibition he gave us an impor- 
tant teaching, a teaching entirely misun- 
derstood by believers who persist in find- 
ing an apologetic value in miracles. For if 

them" (Matt. xi. 5; Luke vii. 22). But here Jesus 
does not appeal to his miracles because they are 
prodigies, to draw from them the conclusion that 
John ought to believe in him ; he appeals to them be- 
cause they are acts of compassion, and victories 
achieved over Satan. Jesus arranges his remarkable 
deeds in gradation, and after the resurrection of the 
dead he mentions the preaching of the gospel to the 
poor, a purely moral act, which appears to him even 
more surprising than the raising of the dead. In fact, 
each time that he performs his work, whether to 
heal a sick person or to preach the gospel, but es- 
pecially in preaching the gospel, and preaching it to 
the poor, he is laboring to overturn Satan's throne ; 
and this is the purpose of his life. Even in this pas- 
sage, which, it is to be remarked, is unique, Jesus con- 
siders his miracles as religious acts, victories of God 
over Satan, of light over darkness. Every converted 
soul, and every sick person healed, push back the 
limits of the kingdom of darkness, one as much as 
the other, or, rather, the converted soul more than 
the other. 



94 JESUS CHRIST 

there is one fact to be deduced with over- 
whelming evidence from the attitude of 
the Christ, it is that they have none, and 
that it serves nothing at all to demonstrate 
their authenticity. Such a demonstration 
has merely a historic interest, like the 
demonstration of the existence of Homer, 
and can in no case have any religious value 
whatsoever. If Jesus had not performed 
a single miracle (I mean a single physical 
miracle), that could have subtracted ab- 
solutel}' nothing from the value of his 
person, and the reality of the moral super- 
naturalness which radiates from his whole 
being. " Say nothing to any one ! " Noth- 
ing is indifferent that Jesus says ; the least 
of his words is of capital importance, and 
it may be affirmed that Christians have not 
yet understood the significance of this 
command. 

" A historic event, whether extraordinary 
or not," writes M. Lachelier, 1 "cannot be 
an object of faith, precisely because it is 
historic and by that very fact an object of 
knowledge. The, same is the case with 
regard to the conclusions which may be 
drawn from a miracle with regard to the 

1 From an unpublished letter to the author. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 95 

character and power of him who performed 
it. Such conclusions, supposing them to 
be legitimate, will always belong in the 
order of knowledge, and will never consti- 
tute a moral and religious faith" 



96 JESUS CHRIST 



CHAPTER VI 

EARLIEST PREACHING OF JESUS ON THE 
KINGDOM OE GOD 

HpHE two words Hammalkuth hash- 
shamayim (the kingdom of heaven) 
are certainly those which Jesus most often 
uttered ; he preferred this expression to 
the "kingdom of God." In our former 
volume we explained that the two expres- 
sions are synonymous. Jesus employed 
the former; the apostles, doubtless in 
order to be better understood by Gentiles, 
made use of the second. Still, though the 
two expressions are synonymous, they pre- 
sent a shade of difference; and we may 
compare with the marked preference of 
Jesus for the form " kingdom of heaven " 
(les cieux), his use of the expression of which 
he was equally fond, "the Father who is 
in heaven" (les cieux). He speaks also of 
rewards "in heaven" (les cieux). Now, 
the Rabbis of that time held to the 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 97 

existence of several heavens, — at least 
seven, — one above the other, overhead 
in the blue expanse which is spread abroad 
beyond the clouds. 1 There was to be 
found the new earth, " the heavenly Jeru- 
salem," the kingdom to come ; and the 
doctors, founding their view upon Daniel 2 
and Enoch, 3 believed that this king- 
dom, called "of the heavens" because 
it was in the heavens, 4 would descend from 
it, all complete, all set in order in some 
sort, to be established upon the earth. The 
Son of Man appearing in the clouds 
would found it, with the help of the 
angels. 5 Then the elect would "see" 
and " enter " it. 6 These expressions were 
taken in their most literal sense; and 
when men said the kingdom is at hand, 
or has come, 7 they meant it is about to 
descend, it will soon be established. 

Nothing indicates that Jesus understood 
by " kingdom of heaven " anything different 
from what his contemporaries understood ; 

1 Bereshith Eabba. Bamidebar Rabba. Syb. Orac. 
3, 83 ; Test. Patriarch, 12 (cf. 2 Cor. xii. 2 ; Eph. iv. 10; 
Heb. iv. 14). 

3 Dan. vii. ff. s Book of Enoch, passim. 

4 See Rev. xxi. 10. 5 Matt. xvi. 27. 
• John iii. 3, 5. 7 Matt. iv. 17. 

7 



98 JESUS CHRIST 

nothing authorizes us to find him using 
on this subject any different language 
from that of the doctors of his people. 

If Jesus had held any other views upon 
this important doctrine than those of his 
contemporaries, he would have said so ; 
he would have carefully distinguished 
his way of looking at it from that of his 
people. Especially when speaking to his 
apostles, deprecating any misunderstanding 
on their part, clearly perceiving how natural 
such a misunderstanding would be, he 
would have taken care to dissipate it, 
would have warned, explained, put them 
on their guard. But he did nothing of the 
kind. Not only did he never take these 
precautions ; on the contrary, he made 
use of all the expressions of his contem- 
poraries, used them just as they used 
them, repeated them just as they did and 
in the sense which everybody gave them. 
To say that Jesus was speaking with 
another meaning, spiritualizing, allegoriz- 
ing, symbolizing, is wholly arbitrary. The 
hearers of Jesus could have understood 
another mode of speech concerning the 
kingdom to come only with the clearest 
and most precise explanations, distinguish- 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 99 

ing the two views. But the Gospels show 
not the slightest trace of explanations of 
this kind. 

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom, he 
always used the future tense. All the 
rewards promised in the beatitudes of the 
Sermon on the Mount were in the future. 
For him, as for all his contemporaries, the 
kingdom was to come. It was always in 
the future in his teachings ; and never, 
not even on the eve of his death, did he 
speak of the kingdom as present and 
already founded. 1 

Jesus also taught his disciples to say, 
" Thy kingdom come!" — the continual 
prayer of the Jews ever since the Exile, 
and certainly his own, as it had been in 
his childhood and his youth. If he added, 
" Thy will be done on earth as in heaven," 
it was because he mentally added "that 

1 If we read is instead of will be in the following 
passages, Matt. v. 3, 10, xi. 11; Luke vii. 28, ix. 62 
[The English version is in the present. — Trans.], the 
reference is evidently to a possession so certain that it 
is anticipated as present. In the same way Jesus says 
elsewhere, " He that believeth in me hath eternal life." 
For that matter, Jesus spoke without the verb, in 
Aramaean, Lo anim hammalkuth hash-shamayim ! ("To 
the poor in spirit the kingdom of heaven ! ") 



100 JESUS CHRIST 

it may be possible for the kingdom which 
is in heaven to appear upon the earth." 

Jesus, then, announced the kingdom as 
to come. The earliest passages in the 
Gospels leave no doubt on this subject. 
When he cried, "Seek ye first the king- 
dom ! " 1 that meant " Seek by prayers, 
ask God, that the kingdom may come." 
The close of the Sermon on the Mount is 
explicit : " He who doeth the will of God 
shall enter into the kingdom." 

Such, then, was his mission as Messiah, 
— to say, " The kingdom is at hand." In 
this Jesus made no innovation. All Jews 
held that the Messiah's first mission would, 
in fact, be to announce the near approach 
of the kingdom of God. At a later day, 
when Jesus was putting his disciples on 
their guard against the false Messiahs who 
were to come, he told them that in order 
to induce belief in their Messiahship they 
would all say, "I am he, and the time is at 
hand ! " 2 This is precisely what he was 
himself doing. 

Having worked out his first thought of 
the kingdom, he formulated it in several 
parables, as was his custom. 

1 Luke xii. 31. * Luke xxi. 8. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 101 

In these allegories 1 he told how the 
kingdom was being prepared for. He 
compared himself to a sower. He was 
sowing the seed. Those who heard and 
bore fruit would enter into the kingdom, 
whose coming was symbolized by the fu- 
ture harvest. The story of the mustard 
seed represented the state of things which 
would make ready for the coming of the 
kingdom. The number of those who were 
to have a part in the kingdom was at 
present small, like a mustard seed, but it 
would keep on growing and would be im- 
mense when the kingdom appeared. The 
same is the case in the action of leaven 
upon dough ; the word which prepares for 
the coming of the kingdom has a hidden 
power which will so transform the hearts 
of the disciples as to make them capable of 
entering the coming kingdom. One must 
sacrifice everything in order to enter the 
kingdom, like the man who finds a treas- 
ure hidden in a field ; and we must seek 
for the kingdom, that is, prepare for it, as 
one seeks for a pearl of great price. For 
the time being Jesus and his disciples 
were casting the net, and gathering into 

1 Matt. xiii. 1 ft. 



102 JESUS CHRIST 

it all sorts of men; but only they would 
enter the kingdom who should be judged 
worthy at the sorting of the last Judgment. 
The same thought is expressed in the para- 
ble of the wheat and the tares ; the king- 
dom cannot be other than future, since 
its coming is represented by the harvest, 
which will be accompanied by the great 
separation made by the angels. 1 

Everything which concerned the king- 
dom was mysterious, that is, secret and 
hidden. 2 At a future time these hidden 

1 The kingdom is, then, future, and the parables of 
Matthew xiii. do not in the least signify that Jesus 
was at that very time founding it by his preaching. 
He was preparing for its coming, — a very different 
thing. It is true that at a later day he said to the 
Pharisees, " The kingdom of God is in the midst of 
you," or " within you " (Luke xvii. 21), and again, " It is 
come upon you " (Luke xi. 21) ; but he certainly did 
not desire by such words to indicate anything other 
than possession of the kingdom by anticipation, — 
a presence which is virtual because it is imminent. 
No other interpretation of these passages is possible. 
To explain them by saying that in them Jesus affirmed 
that the kingdom was founded and was already pres- 
ent in the world, would be to put him in contradiction 
with the entire teaching of his ministry, by virtue of 
two isolated verses. (See a complete exposition of 
these passages in chapter ix., " Opposition to Jesus," 
pagel43). 

2 Matt. xiii. 11 f . 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 103 

things would become visible. When the 
kingdom should appear, every one would 
know all these mysteries. 1 When the 
kingdom should appear, Jesus would put 
the finishing touch to his work, merging 
it in that which he was now doing, for 
both consist in bringing about the reign 
of God. Jesus was the great Reformer. 
The revolution which he was announc- 
ing would be radical. He was looking for 
nothing less than a universal restoration. 2 

For the time being he was performing a 
work of preparation ; there were, in fact, 
aptitudes to acquire before men could be 
ready to enter the kingdom, aptitudes 
purely moral. He must therefore prepare 
for it by a wholly spiritual and subjective 
work, — by the changing of hearts. 

He repudiated anything like political 
preparation ; so early as the days of temp- 
tation he had put aside all idea of a Mes- 
siahship of the strong hand, a triumph by 
force. The Messianic hopes of the Phari- 
sees were, above all things, political. If at 
one moment of his life Jesus was attracted 
by certain Pharisaic ideas, he never was 

i Matt. xiii. 12. 

2 Acts iii. 21 ; Matt. xix. 28. 



104 JESUS CHRIST 

by this one ; he never seems to have been 
interested in politics, and never thought of 
such a thing as revolt. Popular seditions 
appeared to him criminal and useless; 
the adventure of Judas the Gaulonite had 
made that clear. He paid tribute to the 
Romans, and from the very first he prac- 
tised his celebrated maxim, " Render unto 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to 
God the things that are God's." In this 
matter, indeed, he was simply following 
the example of the Essenes, who were 
most careful not to meddle with politics. 

But let us beware of thinking that Jesus, 
taking no part in politics and desiring to 
take no such part, had for that reason re- 
nounced his patriotic faith and his Mes- 
sianic hopes. To see a visible and national 
kingdom founded in his lifetime, to see 
the Jews choosing him for Messiah and 
Master and proclaiming him king, — such 
was, till the last, the great hope of his life. 
No doubt he hid himself when the multi- 
tude wished to make him king ; 1 but solely 
because the hour had not yet come, and 
the people were under a misapprehension 
as to the true nature of his Messiahship, 

1 John vi. 5. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 105 

believing that he intended to appeal to 
arms and make use of violence. Never, 
even in his hour of temptation, did he 
repudiate the national Messianic kingdom. 
We shall see him on Palm Sunday yield- 
ing without resistance to the ovations of 
the multitude, and accepting the homage 
paid to the Messiah-king. Jesus had always 
the most ardent and profound sympathy 
with the national hopes of his people. 

We must, above all things, not forget 
that Jesus constructed no theories, and 
never spoke by virtue of a clearly denned 
system, a logical construction. He did not 
reason about the kingdom, saying, " It 
shall be this and shall not be that. I 
reject this detail which my people admit. 
I accept that one ; I bring to it this new 
idea, this unknown solution." To under- 
stand what Jesus said and thought about 
the kingdom, we must put ourselves in 
thought in the first century, breathe the 
atmosphere of the time, saturate our minds 
with the Jewish notions of the period, and 
then we shall perceive that Jesus by no 
means came to found the kingdom of God 
and promulgate its laws, but that he came 
to announce its coming and hasten it, by 



106 JESUS CHRIST 

detaching men's souls from this world and 
preparing them for the world to come. 
This is the key to his ministry in Galilee. 
Concern for the future, and for what the 
future would be, never left him for an 
instant. Sometimes he would speak as if 
the world were on the eve of a catastrophe ; 
again he spoke as a reformer who had 
abundant time before him, who had come 
to open new paths and change the hearts 
of men. The two attitudes appear to be 
contradictory, but they are not in the least 
so ; for on the one hand Jesus never an- 
nounced a progressive development of the 
kingdom, but spoke of a sudden and final 
catastrophe for which men should prepare ; 
and, on the other hand, the catastrophe 
though not far distant was not imminent. 
Every one had a certain time before him, 
short no doubt, but still a certain time for 
preparation. In other words, the coming 
of the kingdom was near, but not immedi- 
ate (the kingdom "is at hand " ) ; and 
Jesus himself was preparing for it by 
founding a society of disciples which was 
to abide, which had before it, not sev- 
eral centuries, — Jesus never spoke of a 
future of several centuries, — but at least 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 107 

a few years, perhaps many ; he did not 
know exactly how many. 1 He spoke of 
the leaven, whose action is slow; of the 
grain of mustard seed, which takes a cer- 
tain time to grow. He did not look for a 
rapid success ; but he was still young, there 
was time ; little by little the seed would 
grow. He had placed himself in the 
Father's hands, he was awaiting his hour ; 
he had no preconceived views and no self- 
deceptions. 

This is how Jesus, while considering 
the final catastrophe as near at hand, still 
came as a law-giver and reformer. His 
moral teaching plainly shows that the 
proximity of the Judgment was not im- 
mediate ; but it was near, for his own pre- 
occupation in his moral teachings was to 
make men better with intent to prepare 
them to enter the kingdom. 

Jesus then saw in the kingdom neither 
a spiritual deliverance nor the reign of the 
poor and lowly. To say so is to confound 
the kingdom itself with the state of mind 
which would prepare for it. 

In fact, to prepare oneself for it, one 

1 " None knoweth the day nor the hour, not even 
the Son "(Mark xiii. 32). 



108 JESUS CHRIST 

must become poor and lowly, as we shall 
show in the next chapter ; and as to the 
kingdom it was to be very nearly what 
Daniel and Enoch had described. Jesus 
neither criticised nor rejected the apoca- 
lyptic beliefs of his people. Let us not 
forget that never was a critical question 
put by Jesus. He no more thought of 
criticising the Messianic hopes of his time 
than the Pentateuch, and to the end of his 
life he affirmed that the Messiah would 
return again upon the clouds of heaven to 
judge the world. 1 He took this place of 
judge as much in the early days 2 as in the 
parables of the last week of his life. 3 On 
this point he never changed. He was to 
preside over the last Judgment. This was 
his duty and office as Messiah. 

Further, — and this was the very soul of 
what we have dared to call his profound and 

1 To hold that Jesus took these expressions in a 
spiritual sense and saw only figures in the expressions, 
" come down from heaxen," " come in the clouds," is 
to represent him as saying aside to himself, " I will 
adopt all the phraseology of my time ; I will use the 
most realistic apocalyptic language, but it shall he in 
my own mind only figurative and symbolical ; and I 
will tell no one this. They must dixine it." 

2 Matt. xii. 21 ff. ■ Matt. xxv. 31 ff. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 109 

fine genius, — though he destroyed none 
of his people's beliefs, he fulfilled them, 
he brought out their very life. That which 
in his eyes was most grand, most sublime, 
in the coming kingdom was that justice 
should be established, and that they who 
now hunger and thirst should be filled. 1 
It was the righteousness of the kingdom 
which men must first of all seek. 2 The 
sorrowful should be consoled, the meek 
should reign. 3 The future kingdom would 
not be an avenging kingdom, a kingdom 
of blood ; Jesus could not admit that. But 
he did not reject this aspect of his people's 
belief as the result of critical reasoning 
and philosophical examination ; his soul 
refused to believe for a single moment that 
the kingdom of God, which in his view, 
as in that of all Jews, would be the domi- 
nation of God and consequently of the 
Father who is in heaven, could be anything 
else than love, peace, joy, pardon, eternal 
life. All the rest was for him as if it did 
not exist. 

At a later day, in the view of his disci- 
ples, the kingdom would be the Christian 
Church, the society of souls who believed 

1 Matt. v. 6. 2 Matt. vi. 33. s Matt. v. 4 f . 



110 JESUS CHRIST 

in Jesus. To Jesus it was nothing else 
than the Messianic era ; but (and it is here 
that he is incomparably great) it was he 
who prepared for the conception of the 
disciples by raising high the notion of the 
kingdom, accepting all that his people 
taught on the subject, and entirely trans- 
forming it. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 111 



CHAPTER VII 

THE KINGDOM PREPARED FOR BY THE 
LOWLY AND THE POOR 

ET us now see Jesus preparing for the 
coming of the kingdom. 

His first object was to communicate to 
men that sense of divine sonship which he 
himself fully possessed ; he desired to cre- 
ate it in men's souls. To experience this 
feeling, one must become "humble," — 
humble in rank, in money, in influence, 
and humble in happiness. Therefore he 
declares those happy who weep and who 
suffer. 

Jesus made the most of the fact that 
the interpretations by his contemporaries 
of certain passages in Daniel concerning 
the fifth empire were very diverse, to give 
another, which was exceedingly spiritual 
but not at all revolutionary. Everything 
in Judaism was to be retained, but it was 
to be transformed, and this transformation 



112 JESUS CHRIST 

was to be effected by a change in hearts. 1 
It was nothing else than piety, trne piety. 
taking the place of rites and external acts. 
This piety would have its foundation in 
humility, renunciation, a profound sense 
of poverty of spirit. 

This was why Jesus preached a new 
righteousness, which he opposed to that 
of the Scribes and Pharisees. In their 
view, alms, fasts, prayers, works, make 
a man righteous and confer merit upon 
him. Jesus preached a higher righteous- 
ness. 2 Man must humble himself, become 
lowly, poor in spirit, contemplative, must 
hunger and thirst, cry earnestly for mercy, 
— for the Father is merciful, he is full of 
compassion, he remits the debt, he forgives 
those who forgive. The beginning of the 
new life, then, is the desire to attain to it. 
To be conscious of our shortcomings is 
already, in some sort, to receive it. 3 

Yet Jesus never said that hunger and 
thirst after righteousness carry their satis- 

1 It is always the same method, — destroy nothing, 
fulfil all things. 

2 Matt, t. 20. 

8 It has been said, and with reason, that to be con- 
scious of one's limitations is already in some degree 
to hare overpassed them 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 113 

faction in themselves. The kingdom of 
God is in no sense realized by the fact of 
being sought after, desired, aspired unto. 
It is not hunger that nourishes, nor thirst 
that refreshes. To desire righteousness is 
not to obtain it; otherwise the kingdom 
would have been founded by the very fact 
that Jesus was preparing for it. And he 
never said so. The kingdom was to come, 
and righteousness was to be obtained only 
at a later time, at its coming. Then those 
who now hunger and thirst for it shall be 
satisfied. One does not answer his own 
prayers because he prays, and, in the same 
way, one does not enter the kingdom be- 
cause he seeks for it; but one prepares 
himself for it and he will enter it. A 
change of hearts and minds (repentance, 
"for the kingdom is at hand") 1 is, then, 
only the preparation for the kingdom, and 
not the kingdom itself. 

As we have said, Jesus expected the 
kingdom on earth. The transformation 
of society and of the world was to be 
accomplished here, as soon as the Jews 
should be converted. Every one would 
then acclaim Jesus as Messiah; the king- 

1 Mark i. 15 and parallel passages. 
8 



114 JESUS CHRIST 

dom would appear, and the spiritual dom- 
ination of the Christ would begin upon 
the earth. The Father would accord the 
promised rewards, — those of some would 
be great ; 1 and an era of universal felicity 
would begin. 

What was to take place at the begin- 
ning of this era ? How would the king- 
dom be inaugurated ? By a sudden change. 
The contrary of that which is would be. 
The world to come would be the present 
world reversed. The first would be last, 
and the last first. 2 At the present time 
good and evil are mingled, like the tares 
and the wheat in a field. Then there 
would be a great separation ; it would be 
like a great drawing of the net. 3 Jesus 
often referred to the surprise which this 
sudden reversal of things would occasion. 
No one would be expecting it, and when 
this transformation should have been made 
it would be final. 

One of the most unexpected reversals 
which would take place would be the 

i Matt. v. 12, 19, x. 42; Luke vi. 23, 35; Mark 
ix.41. 

2 Matt. xix. 30, xx. 16 ; Mark x. 31 ; Luke xiii. 30. 

3 Matt. xiii. 24 f ., 31, 33, 47 f . ; Mark iv. 11 f. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 115 

exaltation of the lowly, the humble, the 
unknown; they would become the great, 
and would in their turn take first rank. 
Jesus therefore counted much upon the 
poor in the preparation for the coming of 
the kingdom. 1 " That which is exalted 
among men is an abomination in the sight 
of God." The simple, the humble, the 
fishermen of the lake, were the future 
children of the kingdom. Concerning the 
rich, Jesus always professed the most 
literal Essenian doctrine, and his thought 
concerning those who have possessions 
never varied. 2 

Let us bear in mind that the environ- 
ment from which Jesus came was that 
of the populace, the poor, the working- 
class, and that the artisans and humble 
people who knew nothing about politics 
were dreaming, above all things, of a social 
renovation. To realize a fortune and give 
a part of the money to the poor was for 
the Essenes one of the first conditions to 
fulfil in order to be ready to enter the 

1 Luke xvi. 15. 

2 Matt. v. 3, 20, xviii. 3, xix. 14, 23, 24, xxi. 31, xxii. 
2 f . ; Mark x. 14, 15, 23-25 ; Luke iv. 18 f ., vi. 20, xviii. 
16, 17, 24, 25. 



116 JESUS CHRIST 

kingdom when it should appear; and 
when we recall to mind that this was 
also the case in the earliest Christian com- 
munity, we recognize that we are here in 
presence of an idea and a practice of the 
early days. 

Furthermore Jesus preached voluntary 
poverty. 1 In the outset of his ministry, 
and probably during all his youth, he 
conceived of the kingdom of God as 
being prepared for by the renunciation of 
wealth. 

But he no more concerned himself with 
socialism than with politics. One might 
sometimes wish that the true practice of 
the Gospel might be found in the fulfil- 
ment of certain social duties, and that 
doing good to the poor might serve to 
found the kingdom of God. It is not so, 
except so far as love for the poor and the 
practice of good deeds proceed from a 
higher life, and are the natural fruit of 
regeneration of the new birth. All Chris- 
tian duty is not comprised in social duty. 

Yet it is none the less true that in 
Jesus' view the great sign of the Messiah 

1 Matt. xix. 21 ; Mark x. 21 f ., 29, 30 ; Luke xviii. 
221 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 117 

was " the Gospel preached to the poor." 1 
This, according to him, was its highest 
proof. This is evident, since all ranks 
were to change places in the kingdom. 
Those who are called the world, the 
doctors, the Sadducees, the aristocrats, the 
priests would not at first pass in; they 
would enter only when they were changed 
and had become " as little children." 

The child is sacred ; 2 the kingdom of 
God is his. 3 One must become a child to 
enter it. 4 One must receive the kingdom 
as a little child when it comes, 5 and even 
now it is to the children that the Father 
reveals his secrets. 6 

One day Jesus took a child and set him 
in the midst of his disciples and said to 
them: "Except ye turn and become as 
little children, ye shall in no wise enter 
into the kingdom of heaven. 7 The king- 
dom is for children and for such as are 
like them." 

1 Matt. xi. 5. 

2 Matt, xviii. 5, 10, 14 ; Luke xvii. 2. 

3 Matt. xix. 14 ; Mark x. 14 ; Luke xviii. 16. 

4 Matt, xviii. 1 f . ; Mark ix. 33 f . ; Luke ix. 46 f . 

5 Mark x. 15. 

6 Matt. xi. 25; Luke x. 21. 

l Matt, xviii. 3 ; Mark ix. 35, 36 ; Luke ix. 46-48. 



118 JESUS CHRIST 

The kingdom is also for the lowly of 
this world, victims of the rich and the 
proud. It is, finally, for those who are 
without, — publicans, people of bad life ; 
for all those who have to suffer the con- 
tempt of persons of high position, of those 
who command, who have much, who are 
well thought of. 

At a later time Jesus went still further, 
and said that the gospel was for Gentiles 
and Samaritans, — at a later time, we say ; 
for in this first period of his ministry he 
was not yet unsectarian, and he shared the 
notions of those about him with respect 
of the Gentiles. 1 

Meantime the kingdom was, from first to 
last, the kingdom of the poor, and was 
prepared for by the exaltation of the poor. 
This is pure Ebionism. In Jewish soci- 
ety of the j first century those were called 
Ebionim who affected indifference to all 

1 See the following passages : Matt, vi. 32, " After 
all these things do the Gentiles seek ; " vi. 7, " Pray 
not like the Gentiles ; " vii. 6, " Give not that which is 
holy unto the dogs ; " xviii. 17, "Let him be unto thee 
as the Gentile." Jesus did not become non-sectarian 
until after his interview with a Canaanitish woman ; 
we shall speak of this evolution of his thought in the 
eleventh chapter. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 119 

exterior advantages, — glory, pomp, honor, 
and especially money. The Ebionim, who 
were very pious and thoroughly persuaded 
of the speedy appearance of the kingdom, 
were a class marked by humility, gentle- 
ness, and resignation, without forming a 
distinct religious party. It is needless to 
say that their recruits came almost exclu- 
sively from the poorer class ; hence their 
name. At a later time the early Christians 
were called Ebionites by the Jews, — an 
irrefragable evidence that Jesus gained 
most of his early disciples from among 
them, and that he himself was an Ebionite 
in these early days of his ministry, when 
he was still closely attached to the forms 
and traditions of Judaism. " Woe unto 
you that are rich, 5 ' he said in his teaching, 
" for ye have received your consolation ! 
Woe unto you that are full now, for ye 
shall hunger ! Woe unto you, ye that 
laugh now, for ye shall mourn and 
weep ! " 1 " When thou makest a din- 
ner or a supper . . . bid the poor, the 
maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou 
shalt be blessed ; for they have not where- 
with to recompense thee : for thou shalt 
1 Luke vi. 24 ff. 



120 JESUS CHRIST 

be recompensed in the resurrection of the 
just." i 

"In heaven," "the recompense," Jesus 
was always saying, 2 " at the resurrection," 
"in life eternal," "in the kingdom ; " syn- 
onymous expressions all of them, which he 
borrowed, with the ideas which they ex- 
pressed, from the Old Testament and the 
synagogue. 

To understand them, and above all to 
grasp the precise thought of Jesus about 
the poor, we must bear in mind that for a 
long time a feverish democratic movement 
had been fermenting among his people. 
They read and reread — and Jesus had 
often read — the numerous passages of 
the Old Testament where God declares 
that he is the Avenger of the weak and 
the oppressed. 3 The prophets had always 
fulminated against the great. In the minds 
of many, the words " poor " and " gentle," 
" humble " and "pious," had become synony- 
mous, just as "rich" had come to signify 
"impious, evil-disposed, violent." These 

1 Luke xiv. 12-14. 

2 Matt. v. 12, x. 41 ; Mark ix. 41 ; Luke vi. 23, 35 ; etc. 
8 Amos ii. 6; Isa. lxiii. 9; Ps. xxv. 9, xxxvii. 11, 

lxxix. 33. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 121 

ideas had long been growing deeper and 
stronger. The Book of Enoch cursed the 
rich and powerful. 1 It considers luxury as 
a crime, and in it the Son of man de- 
thrones kings. 2 

In the first century the rich man was 
the "bad rich man," and Jesus called 
money "the mammon of unrighteousness." 3 
That was the popular and current term for 
wealth. It was held to be always unjust and 
ill-gotten. The rich man who was " clothed 
in purple and fine linen," who "fared 
sumptuously every day," had already 
received "his good things," "his recom- 
pense," "that which was due him," and 
therefore in the abode of the dead he would 
be "in torment ; " the poor man, who had 
been covered with sores, and to whom the 
rich man had not given even his crumbs to 
eat, would lie " in Abraham's bosom " and 
would be " comforted." Why ? Because 
he had had " evil things " in his life. 
Therefore in the life to come compensation 
would be made him; the one would be 
" in anguish," and the other " comforted." 4 

1 Chaps, xxiii., xc, c, civ. 

2 Chap. xlvi. 4-8. 

8 Luke xvi. 9. * Luke xvi. 19 f£. 



122 JESUS CHRIST 

This doctrine of future compensation 
had been current since the times of the 
Maccabees, and it was this which had 
sustained and consoled the lowly and 
obscure. Their, resignation was made of 
hope, and they bore their burden with so 
much the more courage in that they saw 
by faith the future abode of eternal felicity, 
the unending banquet where, lying in 
Abraham's bosom, they should chink the 
wine of the celestial Passover, which was 
promised to them forever. 

The Ebionite and the poor were, then, 
reckoned holy and beloved of God. It 
followed that material poverty, want of 
money, was held to be closely allied with 
the sentiment of moral destitution, poverty 
of spirit. This is why Jesus sometimes 
said that in order to enter the kingdom 
one must be " poor " (in money) 1 some- 
times that he must be "poor in spirit; " 2 
that is, poor in his own mind, his own 
judgment, humble and repentant. 

This preference for those whom the 
world disdains and despises was a dis- 
tinctive feature of Jesus' character. He 
had pity on the weakness and powerless- 
1 Luke vi. 20. 2 Matt. v. 3. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 123 

ness of the lowly. He ardently loved the 
people and all that was of the people, 1 sur- 
passing his contemporaries in this respect, 
and setting himself against the national 
aspirations after domination. The Ebionite 
desired the coming of the kingdom be- 
cause then he would become rich, would 
command in his turn, and humiliate the 
proud who now humiliated him. Jesus 
never accepted such a doctrine. If for him 
true greatness was in serving, it was not 
in the least because serving would lead in 
the end to being served. His conscience, 
enlightened by incessant communion with 
the Father, transformed and spiritualized 
the material and earthly notions of his 
compatriots. 

No doubt he believed and said that 
when the kingdom should come, righteous- 
ness would reign and the lowly would be 
happy ; but they were to be happy while 
remaining lowly, while in the opinion of 
most of the Jews it was the strong, the 
able, the violent, who were to reign. The 
Pharisees entirely expected to be first, and 
we have already had occasion to say that 
their sole purpose in strictly carrying out 
1 Matt. ix. 36; Mark vi. 34. 



124 JESUS CHRIST 

the most minute prescriptions of the Law 
was to secure to themselves good places 
in the kingdom. Jesus preached the 
contrary. 

Yet it cannot be denied that he appro- 
priated the doctrine of compensation. In 
the last centuries before his birth the idea 
had spread abroad that God could not have 
imposed the burden of life upon the poor, 
the afflicted, the lowly, without preparing 
for them compensation in the future king- 
dom and at the resurrection of the just, 
in which they would certainly have part. 
Jesus made his own this idea, which was 
based upon faith in the justice of God. 
There was to be a distributive justice, — a 
statement which is the profound reason of 
the Beatitudes. 1 Men said, 4 -In a little 
while the deliverance;" Jesus repeated it 
with unalterable conviction. Yet a little 
while and the future would be changed 
into present, sorrow would be changed into 
joy, tears into laughter, suffering into end- 
less well-being. Thence the hope, full of 
confidence and gayety, which filled all the 
first period of his ministry. 

We may thus sum up in a few words the 
i Matt. v. 3 ff. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 125 

earliest preaching of Jesus upon the king- 
dom of God. 1 He understood by kingdom 
a condition of things to come, an ideal life, 
supraterrestrial, but realized on earth when 
the Messiah should assume his place of 
authority. This kingdom of God, which 
he preferred to call the kingdom of 
heaven, because it was then in heaven and 
was to come down from thence, would be 
the abode, on the transformed earth, of 
those who should be judged worthy to 
enter therein. 

Jesus, then, taught nothing different from 
his contemporaries. Yet he differentiated 
himself from them by saying that no one 
would enter the kingdom as a matter of 
right, that he must be prepared by conver- 
sion to enter at a future day. The poor 
were nearer to conversion than the rich. 
But the rich were not shut out from it, — 
they must make themselves materially and 
morally poor, — and the poor were not cer- 
tain of it, for if they were already lowly in 
social position they must add to this exter- 
nal poverty poverty of spirit, — poverty in 
a spiritual and moral sense. He himself, 

1 In our last volume we shall have to speak of 
Jesus' final idea of the kingdom of God. 



126 JESUS CHRIST 

the Messiah, was charged with this pre- 
paratory work for all, rich and poor. 

The Jews held that the kingdom would 
have no other preparation than external 
miracles, signs from heaven impressing 
every one with their marvellous character. 
Jesus refused these signs from heaven. 1 
More than this, the whole nation, accord- 
ing to the Pharisees, had a right to the 
kingdom and were sure to enter it; the 
only preparation required was obedience to 
the Law and submission to Pharisaic tradi- 
tion. 2 Jesus preached precisely the reverse. 

At a later time the Rabbis taught a 
purely spiritual and moral kingdom of 
God, but in the time of Jesus such a thing 
was not thought of. The state of heart 
would prepare for the kingdom, but was 
not the kingdom itself, the era of happi- 
ness, the universal palingenesis which Jesus 
at first firmly hoped to produce during his 
life. This entirely religious hope was of a 
fundamentally Israeli tish and national char- 
acter, especially in the earlier period of his 
ministry. As we have said, Jesus was not 
yet unsectarian. 

i Matt. xii. 38 f ., xvi. 1 f . ; Mark yiii. 11. 
2 Sank. fol. xxvii. 2. 



DURING BIS MINISTRY 127 

Finally, the socialism of Jesus, if we 
may so much as use the word, was the 
reverse of the socialism of to-day. The 
absurd dream of our modern Utopia-makers 
is to impoverish the rich in order to enrich 
the poor and establish an equality of 
fortune which will make everybody com- 
fortable. Jesus preached equality in abne- 
gation and poverty for all men. While 
with many of our contemporary socialists 
the object is to become rich, have posses- 
sions, enjoy, his was to become poor, empty 
oneself, suffer, — -yes, sutler; for in his 
view happiness consists in submission to 
the Father's will, humility of spirit is the 
true greatness, and oneness in suffering the 
true equality, — the only equality possible, 
the only equality to be desired. 



128 JESUS CHRIST 



CHAPTER VIII 

JOURNEYS TO JEEUSA1EM 

"P VERY year Jesus made several obliga- 
tory journeys to Jerusalem. He had 
always made them ; he had thus been able 
a long time back to form an opinion con- 
cerning the Sadducees, the Temple, and the 
worship which was celebrated there. We 
believe that his convictions in this respect 
date at latest from the time immediately 
preceding his entrance upon his ministry. 

Like every true Pharisee and every seri- 
ous Essene, he had separated hiinself from 
Sadduceeism. Nevertheless he had retained 
a hope of succeeding even with the Sad- 
ducees; and it seems to us certain that 
before deciding upon Capernaum, on the 
border of the lake, he had tried to make 
himself known in Jerusalem. 

It is easy to understand that the capital 
would particularly attract him, and that he 
did not resolve to shut himself up in the 
narrow canton of Galilee until he had 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 129 

failed in the centre itself ; he could not 
lose the hope of being one day welcomed 
in that place, for no success would be 
final for his purpose except as he should 
succeed in the Holy City. Jerusalem was 
what he needed to conquer ; and when she 
was gained, the rest of the country would 
soon be his. Therefore he did not settle 
upon the lake shore until Jerusalem had 
been closed to him. 

It is true that the traditional Gospels 
know only the ministry in Galilee, with 
the exception of the last week; but the 
Gospel of St. John has preserved for us 
the very clear memory of several under- 
takings of Jesus at Jerusalem, most of 
them in the early part of his ministry, 
precisely at the time when the desire to 
speak and act at the very centre of the 
nation would naturally be in his heart. 
Everything, therefore, leads us to believe 
that the indications of the fourth Gospel 
are in this respect, as in others, entirely 
historical. Jesus began his work, not in 
Galilee, but in Jerusalem ; and this is one 
of the many touches which reveal the eye- 
witness revising the errors of the synoptical 
tradition. 

9 



130 JESUS CHRIST 

It is again remarkable that John places 
the purification of the Temple at its true 
date. It was an act of inauguration ; and 
the first three Gospels, which know only 
of a single journey to Jerusalem, although 
they insist upon several, 1 are forced to 
place the purification of the Temple in 
this single visit, and relegate it to the 
last week, to a time which is highly 
improbable. 2 

In one of his early journeys to Jerusa- 
lem, long before all that ministry in Gali- 
lee which we have already narrated, Jesus 
had driven the merchants from the Tem- 
ple, because, like every true Pharisee and 
every true Essene, he was outraged by the 
profanation of the sanctuary. 

He expelled the sellers in the Temple 
court because they had no right there ; he 
desired them to install themselves outside 
the doors. Their presence in the Court of 

1 Matt, xxiii. 37. Observe particularly the word 
iroaditis. 

2 I say nothing of the singular opinion of those who 
believe in two purifications of the Temple, — one at the 
opening, the other at the close of Jesus' ministry, — 
that weak invention of the harmonists who, in spite of 
their protestations, are the slaves of their invincible 
belief in the infallibility of the Bible. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 131 

the Gentiles was an insult to God; they 
changed " a house of prayer " into a " den 
of thieves." 

Moreover, we are permitted to suppose 
that Jesus did not simply object to the fact 
that they were installed in one place and 
not in another, but that up to a certain 
point he objected to their presence itself. 
It is certain that, save the Paschal lamb 
(the patriotic and family feast, which he 
greatly prized), Jesus seems never to have 
offered a sacrifice in the Temple. He 
loved to recall the word of Jehovah in 
Hosea, saying, "I will have mercy and 
not sacrifice." Besides, sacrifices had fallen 
into discredit. None of the Jews " of the 
Dispersion" offered or could offer them. 
These were none the less pious for that, 
none the less devoted to the Law, none the 
less thoroughly true Jews. Jesus acted in 
the character of a liberal Jew, an anti- 
Sadducean Pharisee, when he drove the 
merchants out of the Temple ; and this act 
was certainly approved by the Pharisees, 
at the same time that it brought him under 
the disapproval of the official authorities. 
But in performing it and in opposing 
sacrifices, Jesus only carried out the 



132 JESUS CHRIST 

teaching of Isaiah, when he wrote these 
words : — 

" What have I to do with the multitude of 

your sacrifices, says Jehovah : 
I am satiated with holocausts of rams, and the 

fat of calves. 
I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, of 

sheep, and of goats. 
When you come to present yourselves before 

me, 
Who requires it of you to trample my courts? 
Cease to bring vain offerings. 
I have a horror of incense, 
New moons, Sabbaths, and assemblies; 
I cannot look upon iniquity and the solemn 

meeting ; 
My soul hates your new moons and your 

feasts, 
They are a burden to me, 
I am weary of bearing them. 
When you spread forth your hands, I turn 

away mine eyes ; 
When you multiply prayers, I do not listen. 
Your hands are full of blood ; 
Wash you, make you clean, 
Put away the evil of your doings from before 

mine eyes. 
Cease to do evil, 
Learn to do well, seek justice, 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 133 

Protect the oppressed, 

Procure justice for the orphan, 

Defend the widow. 

Come, let us plead together, saith Jehovah." 1 

From the time that these words were 
written the Temple was doomed to dis- 
appear. 

The ardent apostrophes of Isaiah, and 
other similar passages of the Book of the 
Prophets, were read and re-read by the 
Pharisees, by the Ebionites, by all who felt 
religious longings and failed to find their 
satisfaction in the ceremonies of the Tem- 
ple ; and a separation had long been made 
between these and the aristocratic Saddu- 
cees. It was necessary to choose either 
the latter or the liberal Pharisees ; Jesus 
had long since made his choice, and the 
purification of the Temple aroused against 
him the hatred of the priests. On that day 
he perceived that from this quarter he was 
certain to encounter an invincible opposi- 
tion. He was indeed too independent to 
succeed in a circle so narrowly restricted 
and. unintelligently conservative. A say- 
ing of his at the time of the expulsion of 

1 Isa. i. 11-18 (Segond's French translation). 



134 JUS US CHRIST 

the merchants was seized upon, distorted, 
and characterized as blasphemy. 1 

From this time Jesus was obliged to give 
up the thought of an immediate attempt 
upon the holy city ; but he continued duti- 
fully to show himself there three or four 
times a year, on festal occasions, and in 
any case in the month Nisan, at the Pass- 
over. 

He was strongly attached to the Passover 
pilgrimage, to which he had been accus- 
tomed from childhood. He and his disci- 
ples used to go up together to the capital ; 
and the little company, unobserved in the 
enormous multitudes of the festival days, 
would keep the Paschal feast and observe 
all the accustomed rites. They would 
light the Sabbath lamp, — as indeed they 
did every week, but with more solemnity 
on this day. The spiritual family, made 
up of the apostles and the Master, would 
gather around the unleavened bread, and 
would sing together with full voices the 
old patriotic and religious songs which they 
had known by heart from childhood. 

Jesus made no use of these short visits 
to again attempt to make himself known. 

i John ii. 19 f . 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 135 

He clearly saw that the hour for speaking 
in the porticos of the Temple had not yet 
come, and that to resume his former attempt 
would be useless. St. John has preserved 
the memory of an interview which in one 
of his earlier visits he had with a Pharisee 
of note named Nicodemus. 1 The words 
then exchanged between him and his inter- 
locutor no doubt also served to show him 
that any attempt upon a society so unintel- 
ligent in religious things would be entirely 
useless, at least at that time. 

We must say more. The annual visits 
of Jesus to Jerusalem had their influence 
in separating him from Judaism, at least 
from a certain kind of Judaism. From 
these, visits came the first light on this sub- 
ject ; they made him understand how little 
of a Jew he was, and that day by day he 
was becoming less of one. Besides, he 
had failed there and he had a work to 
do in Galilee. It was already begun, it 
offered bright hopes ; it was the work to 
pursue. 

At Jerusalem, side by side with Sad- 
duceeism, there reigned a strict union of 
formalism and fanaticism, that is to say, 

1 John iii. 1 ff. 



136 J£SCS CHRIST 

Pharisaism inspired by a most detestable 
spirit, than which there can hardly be any- 
thing more repulsive in the world. 

Jesus saw persons passing along the 
streets whom he afterward described to his 
hearers in Galilee. Here is one. emaciated 
by fasting, heaving profound sighs, moving 
painfully, thus to exaggerate his appearance 
of fatigue and exhaustion, and exhibiting 
to the public a face as of an exhumed 
corpse. Here is another, who throws a 
corner of his mantle over his head above 
his turban, so as not to be distracted by the 
sight of passing women; in consequence 
he sees nothing, and bumps himself against 
the walls. Another, standing at a street 
corner or at a crossing in order to be well 
seen, tarns his face to the wall, and lifts 
up his voice : he is praying, telling God 
how he pays his tithes and sets an example 
of all the virtues ; a fourth walks bent 
double, his head as low as possible, paying 
heed to nothing, because he is absorbed in 
meditation on a difficult text. One can 
imagine the indignation with which such 
sights inspired Jesus. ;> Oh. the hypo- 
crites ! " he would say when he saw them ; 
" they have received then reward ! " 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 137 

Among themselves, in their schools, these 
worthies were forever deep in casuistries 
which bristled with minute points. These 
were the doctors of occult learning, a most 
accurate notion of which may be gained 
from almost any page of the Talmud. 
They carried on discussions of most ab- 
surd puerility, interminable successions of 
solemn trivialities without the slightest 
moral value, filling with pride those who 
devoted themselves to these so-called stud- 
ies, and closing their minds to such a 
degree that these barbarous absurdities 
appeared to them as the natural and seri- 
ous occupation of grave and respectable 
persons. 

There was not, and there could not be, a 
single point of contact between Jesus and 
these Jerusalemites. Besides, Galileans 
were a despised folk. The disdain which 
Jesus had already been aware of when at 
the age of twelve years he accompanied 
Joseph and Mary to Jerusalem for the 
first time, he had felt more and more 
acutely every year. Their accent was 
laughed at ; they were considered unortho- 
dox ; they were deemed ignorant and some- 
what ridiculous. 



138 JESUS CHRIST 

And then the ideas of Jesus had decidedly 
changed. The Temple, where at the age of 
twelve he had enjoyed such sweet and 
pure emotions, to such a degree that he 
called what he was doing " occupying 
himself with the things of his Father," * 
and where he had lingered, forgetful of 
everything else, — the Temple, to remain 
in which then seemed to him the supreme 
happiness, had become to him the symbol of 
all that was to disappear. The very building 
itself was to be destroyed. In vain had it 
been rebuilt, in vain did the priesthood 
hope for it a long future. Jesus perceived 
that nothing of all that was destined to 
last long. Sadduceeism would pass away, 
he said to himself ; and its abode, the Tem- 
ple, would also pass away. He who often 
repeated, "I desire mercy and not sacri- 
fice," 2 could not look upon the Temple in 
another light than that of the Pharisees 
themselves, and the latter had for a very 
long time held it as of slight consequence. 

Ah, yes, if it had continued to be what 
it ought to have been, Jesus would have 
made it his chosen habitation ! Even in 
its decadence he still loved it, for it was 

1 Luke ii. 49. 2 Hos. vi. 6. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 139 

still his Father's house, a "house of 
prayer;" and though it might have be- 
come the arena of discussions, disputes, 
and subtile questions, he still made it his 
centre on all his visits. But what he 
saw there deeply pained him. In the 
court were stalls, mercantile operations, 
all the movement and traffic of a bazaar ; 
for it is needless to say that the expulsion 
which he effected was followed by no 
enduring result. Before the sanctuary 
were hideous scenes of butchery, and 
among the Temple servants an irreligious 
vulgarity which wounded his pious feel- 
ings. This debased priesthood did not 
seem to him the inheritors of the ancient 
traditions. The true heirs were those spir- 
itually minded ones who carried forward 
the first chapter of Isaiah, and were in- 
spired with its prophetic utterances. 

" To love God and one's neighbor is 
much more than all whole burnt offerings 
and sacrifices." 1 This the Scribes of his time 
loudly proclaimed. Much more was Jesus 
convinced of it. The synagogue, with its 
orators, its liberty of preaching, appeared 
to him far more serious and important than 
1 Mark xii. 33. 



140 JESUS CHRIST 

the mechanical ritualistic functions of in- 
different and formalizing priests. 

There were then, so to speak, two 
Judaisms, growing ever wider and wider 
apart. On one side the men of the 
Talmuds. the learned men, laics all of 
them, rulers of the synagogue and belong- 
ing to the Pharisaic party. On the other 
side the priests, occupying an elevated 
rank, rulers of the Temple and even of the 
Sanhedrim forming an incredulous, Epi- 
curean, almost impious aristocracy, a sacer- 
dotal caste apart from the people and 
the national sentiment represented by the 
Zealots, who were enthusiastic laymen. 
The Sadducees would have no innovators 
nor innovations ; the official routine sufficed 
for them. It was they first who detached 
Jesus from Judaism. The sight of the 
irreligion and moral carelessness of those 
who were in possession of the Temple 
itself, the haughty impiety of those who 
represented the race of Aaron, first began 
to persuade Jesus of the necessity of ab- 
rogating the Law. 

Luther lost all his illusions at Rome. 
In the same way Jesus learned much from 
his visits to Jerusalem. His rupture with 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 141 

the Temple preceded his rupture with the 
Pharisees. It must, then, have been effected 
during the visits which he made to the holy 
city during his Galilean ministry ; and this 
first separation marks his entrance upon 
the second phase of his ministry, — for it 
was soon followed by the second. 

Up to this time he had been a Jewish 
reformer; henceforth he was to be the 
destroyer of Judaism. The latter, under 
its sacerdotal form, inspired in him a 
repugnance with which its Pharisaic form 
was shortly also to inspire him. It was 
necessary that the sacrifices should be 
abolished. The fulfilling, of which he 
often spoke, would in this case be an abo- 
lition. Here again Jesus adheres to Es- 
senism, and develops an idea which he 
received from the Essenes, for they were 
entirely indifferent to the Temple, all 
of them considering it as impious and 
profaned. 

On his return to Galilee after these 
journeys to Jerusalem, Jesus used to re- 
sume his work of preparation for the 
kingdom ; but we have now arrived at a 
time where he could not again resume it: 
the rupture with the Pharisees was now in 



142 JESUS CHRIST 

its turn about to be precipitated. Jesus 
was to separate himself from them. In fact, 
he had for a long time been separate from 
them. He had thought himself still of 
their number, doing nothing else than 
accentuate the liberality of the best among 
them. But now he perceived to what an 
extent he actually repudiated them, and 
with them all Judaism. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 148 



CHAPTER IX 

OPPOSITION TO JESUS 

JESUS preached a long time in Galilee 
without encountering the slightest op- 
position. Rabbis were going about the 
country ; he was one of them ; they were all 
free, and no preacher was disturbed by any 
one in the exercise of his ministry. Ex- 
hortations and cures attracted some people 
and left others indifferent, and the little 
Jewish world none the less went on its 
e very-day life. 

But the success of Jesus was such that 
at last it excited both jealousy and fear. 
On certain days the people came in crowds 
to hear him. 1 Certain Pharisees who had 
been far from attaining such success, saw 
all this with displeasure ; and from this to 
finding Jesus in error, insisting that his 
success was not sound, and investigating 
his life, discovering in it omission of rites 

1 Matt. iv. 25; Mark ii. 4; Luke v. 1, viii. 4, 19, xi. 
29, xii. 1 ; etc. 



144 JESUS CHX1ST 

and errors of practice or of doctrine, was 
not very far. Jesus perceived that he was 
being spied upon, suspected ; that his liber- 
ality was criticised ; and the time came 
when he was obliged to hide himself. 1 

He had already been repelled from Naz- 
areth; and he had certainly been very 
sensitive to the aloofness of his own com- 
patriots. The Nazarenes, who had known 
him as a child, persisted in remaining un- 
believing. They had seen Jesus grow up 
in their village ; they remembered the car- 
penter's bench, his sisters were married in 
the town, his brothers did not believe, 2 and 
decidedly he could not be a prophet in his 
own country : he admitted that himself. 
On the border of the lake, Chorazin and 
Bethsaida had also refused to yield to 
him. 3 But it was above all from the Phar- 
isees that gradually came the most overt 
opposition, that which was destined to 
take on formidable proportions and pur- 
sue Jesus to the very end. 

In the presence of this new opposition, 

1 Matt. xiii. 14-16 ; Mark iii. 7, ix. 29, 30. 

2 John vii. 5. 

8 Matt. xi. 21, 24; Luke x. 12-15; Matt. xii. 41, 
42 ; Luke xi. 31, 32, xviii. 8. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 145 

the tokens of hostility which we have 
already seen count for nothing. When 
Jesus was repelled at Jerusalem, it was 
only by Sadduceeism, a form of Jewish 
faith which had no strength and no future. 
When he failed at Nazareth, it was as the 
consequence of local animosity resting 
on private motives. But the rupture with 
the Pharisees was the rupture with Juda- 
ism itself, of all in it that was most vital 
and authentic. 

Up to this time — and this is the character 
of this first period of his ministry — Jesus, 
as we have said and shown, had remained 
in the great current of the best Pharisaic 
ideas. He had pursued a parallel work 
with that of the Pharisees, in no sense 
hostile to it, but on the contrary affording 
numerous points of contact with it ; but 
little by little the resemblance had been 
effaced. In reality, for a long time Jesus 
had been little by little detaching himself 
from Pharisaism without in any wise in- 
tending it, believing himself to be faithful 
to the true spirit of the religion of his 
people, persuaded that he was destroying 
nothing, but fulfilling all things. From 
this time he perceived that the spirit which 
10 



146 JESUS CHRIST 

animated him and the reform which he 

desired were not in the least conformable 
to the hopes of his people, and especially 
of those who led them, the Pharisees. 

On the one hand, his success was increas- 
ing ; on the other, that which divided him 
from the old Judaism was growing sharper, 
a separation was inevitable. 

In fact, the formalism of the Pharisees 
had always displeased him. He had at all 
times disapproved of the vain practices 
and affectations of many among them. 1 
He preached the religion of the heart, and 
his whole law was the love of God, charity, 
forgiveness. 2 We have said that he estab- 
lished no religious practice ; that if he 
later instituted Baptism and the Eucharist, 
still for the moment he desired only a 
heart-religion which should show itself by 
fulfilling the will of God and not by exterior 
mechanical practices. 3 He remained true 
to the tradition of the prophet Isaiah. 
That book was certainly among his chosen 
reading, and we do not dispute that more 

1 Matt. xv. 9, ix. 14, xi. 19, vi. 2 ff. 

2 Matt. xxii. 37 f . ; Mark arii. 28 f . ; Luke x. 25 f . 

8 Matt. xv. 8 ; Mark vii. 6 ; borrowed from Isa. 
13. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 147 

than one of the Pharisees secretly approved 
of him. 

But he was decidedly too liberal for the 
majority of them, and he became more and 
more so all the time. Concerning the 
Sabbath in particular, he was more than 
liberal ; he openly violated it. 1 Not that 
he rejected it in itself, but he rejected 
the superstitious beliefs and the miserable 
casuistry of which its observance was the 
source. 

The same was the case with ablutions 
and the interminable discussions concern- 
ing what is pure and what is impure. 2 
Finally, he explicitly accused the Phari- 
sees ; he called them " blind leaders of the 
blind," and declared that they were "in- 
wardly corrupt." 3 

Let us make clear the points upon 
which Jesus squarely separated himself 
from Pharisaism. He said that it was the 
heart which must be changed : with the 
Pharisees observances sufficed. They were 
satisfied, sure of themselves, laying em- 
phasis on external things, austere in a 

1 Matt. xii. 1-5 and parallel passages. 

2 Mark vii. 1 ff. 

8 Matt. xii. 34, xv. 1 f ., xxiii. ; Luke vi. 45, xi. 39 f . 



148 JESUS CHRIST 

somewhat narrow way, making veritable 
dupes of their disciples. Jesus preached 
to the poor, the humble, the lowly ; and 
the Pharisees had a religion for people of 
standing. They were impeccable pedants, 
always in the right; they took the chief 
seats in the synagogues, and did their alms 
to the sound of the trumpet. Jesus re- 
quired humility and fear in view of the 
judgment of God, and the Pharisees prayed 
aloud, dragging their feet and stumbling 
at the stones, walking with bended backs, 
overwhelmed with the burden of the Law. 
It was especially the Pharisees of the 
school of Shammai who kept at a distance 
from Jesus, and from whom Jesus also 
kept at a distance. Agreeing with them 
on a single point, divorce, Jesus certainly 
preferred the Pharisees of the school of 
Hillel. The disciples of Shammai were 
narrow and exclusive ; they stifled the 
Law under tradition, and in the inter- 
est of its protection surrounded it with a 
hedge. Their conservative measures were 
feeble and outworn precautions, which 
could not but arouse the repugnance of 
every one who had any degree of breadth 
of mind. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 149 

Thus it was that Jesus felt the bonds to 
be breaking, one by one, that up to this 
time had held him to the Judaism of his 
day. The synagogue which he had fre- 
quented and loved, the worship practised 
by his mother, the worship which had 
entranced his childhood and which indeed 
he never entirely gave up, 1 were no longer 
for him what they had once been. It was 
impossible that he should not find the 
worship hollow and the teaching a tissue 
of error. And it was these Pharisees who 
were the leaders of it, — the Pharisees on 
whom he had so strongly counted ! 

Henceforth he would struggle against 
official hypocrisy, opposing text to tradi- 
tion. Theology, as it develops, always 
goes farther and farther from its starting- 
point. Jesus showed the Pharisees that 
they must go back to the authorities and 
hold fast by the texts ; the Protestants 
were to do the same thing in the sixteenth 
century. 2 

But he did more, and the exegetical 
argument was not the essential one in his 
eyes. Before appealing to texts he had 

1 Luke iv. 16, "according to his custom." 

2 Matt. xv. 2 ff. ; Mark vii. 2. 



150 JESUS CHRIST 

appealed to the authority of his conscience. 
As early as the Sermon on the Mount, as 
we showed in our former volume, he op- 
posed to the text itself his " But I say 
unto you." 1 If the Pharisees altered Mosa- 
ism with their traditions, he did not simply 
refer everything to Moses, nor simply re- 
store the old religion. He did not put 
new wine into old wine-skins. 2 He created 
a new order of things, a new and final 
religion. Decidedly he not only separated 
himself from the Judaism of his time, but 
from the ancient Law, the Torah itself. 

Yet the Pharisees did not attack him 
upon that point. His "I say unto you" 
might pass for an interpretation, a com- 
mentary; and they themselves made the 
like. True first-century Jews, what espe- 
cially grieved them was that Jesus did not 
observe the rites. He might think as he 
liked, but the intolerable thing was that 
he did not practise. What ! he did not 
fast ! He did not refrain from a single one 
of the thirty-nine works forbidden on the 
Sabbath day ! He associated with sinners, 
continually contracted uncleannesses, and 

1 Matt. v. 22, 28, 34, etc. 

2 Matt. ix. 17 ; Mark ii. 22; Luke v. 38. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 151 

did not so much as dream of perceiving 
it ! And he required nothing of his dis- 
ciples, taught them nothing of what is 
permitted and what forbidden, and the 
apostles never fasted ! l What ! no ab- 
lutions, no complete bath before meals ! 
He said, " Give alms, and all things are 
clean unto you." 2 What a scandal ! The 
Pharisees were ruffled to the last degree. 
The parable of the Pharisee and the Pub- 
lican carried their exasperation to a 
climax. 3 

Their hatred increased in direct propor- 
tion to the increasing aloofness of Jesus 
from Judaism. It is certain that he was by 
this time hardly a Jew, and that at bottom 
he had always been very little a Jew. 
When he uttered the Sermon on the Mount, 
spiritualizing Pharisaism and interpreting 
the Law in its largest sense, he believed 
himself to be in the great current of au- 
thentic Judaism ; he expected to preserve 
it by reforming it. Therefore he affirmed 
that not one jot should pass without being 
fulfilled, but fulfilled in his own way, 

1 Matt. xv. 1 ff. ; Mark vii. 4, 8 ; Luke v. 33-39, and 
vi. 1 ff., xviii. 38 ff. 

2 Luke xi. 41. 3 Luke xviii. 9 f. 



152 JESUS CHRIST 

fulfilled after having been transformed; 
and, rising from the act to the sentiment 
which dictated it, he thought himself to be 
professing true Mosaism. We have already 
compared him to Luther protesting against 
indulgences, convinced that he was doing 
the work of a good Catholic, certain that 
the Pope would approve of him, yet soon 
to be cast out and excommunicated. This 
was logical, for he had not for a long time 
been a Catholic. In the same way Jesus, 
preaching a change of heart, saying that 
the act itself was nothing, appealing to the 
moral sense, was no longer a Jew; for 
practice and the deed performed are the 
very essence of Judaism. 

Thus Jesus and the Pharisees engaged 
in an open conflict. The latter accused 
Jesus of casting out demons by the prince 
of demons. 1 The attack was brutal; it 
began with the most odious of calumnies 
and the most offensive of insults. The 
accusation that Jesus was inspired by Satan 
recalls the accusation formulated in the 
Middle Ages in the words, " He has 
sold his soul to the Devil," — so true 

i Matt. xii. 24 ; Mark iii. 22 ; Luke xi. 15. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 153 

it is that clerical hatred is the same in 
all times. 1 

1 In his reply Jesus seems to admit that the king- 
dom of God is present. We have already explained 
this passage, but it is useful to recur to it here. Jesus 
first said, " If I by the finger of God cast out demons, 
then is the kingdom of God come upon you" (Matt, 
xii. 28; Luke xi. 20). This passage does not signify 
that the kingdom is already founded, but simply that 
it is imminent. The kingdom has come £<p v/xas. The 
term expresses a menace, something that is to happen- 
The kingdom confronts you with its chastisements. 
You are living immediately before its coming. This 
fact, that demons are to-day cast out by me with 
the aid of God, proves the speedy appearance of the 
kingdom ; you have come face to face with it, and it 
is close by. The same was the case when the Phari- 
sees asked Jesus when the kingdom would appear 
(Luke xvii. 20), and he replied, " The kingdom of God 
cometh not with observation : neither shall they say, 
Lo, here ! or Lo, there ! for lo, the kingdom of God is 
in your midst/' Here Jesus said: The kingdom of 
God is not being prepared for by exterior signs, 
miracles, portents, as you Pharisees suppose : there 
will no doubt be great signs at the last hour, catas- 
trophes and terrible woes ; but all that will happen 
only when hearts are ready. When men are prepared 
to enter the kingdom, when they are changed, born 
aneAv, become as little children, poor, simple, — trans- 
formations which are not visible, — then the kingdom 
will appear without development, suddenly, without 
precursory signs, like the thief in the night. The 
premonitory signs will be purely moral, and by these 
signs, which already exist, the kingdom is announced ; 
it is virtually present in my person. There will be no 



154 JESUS CHRIST 

Jesus replied by making use of a weapon 
which he wielded as he alone could do, — 
irony. It is seldom that there is no ill- 
nature in irony. There was none in the 
irony of Jesus ; it was holy because it was 
always just and always merited. Therefore 
it touched the heart, and the Jews never 
recovered from it. The ridicule which 
attaches to their name dates from the day 
when Jesus said to one of them, "Which 
of these three, ihinkest thou, proved neigh- 
bor unto him that fell among the robbers ? " 1 
Or again, " Many good works have I shown 
you . . . for which of those works do ye 
stone me?" 2 "Is it lawful on the Sab- 
bath day to do good, or to do harm? to 
save a soul, or to destroy itV^ z "Is one a 
debtor when he swears by the Temple? 
or must he swear by the gold of the Tem- 

sign which men can observe and say, "Here is the 
kingdom," for I am the true sign, it is I whom you 
must observe and listen to. No other proof will be 
given you than my own person. That we must not 
understand by these words that the kingdom of God 
is present and founded, is proved by the witness of the 
fact that everywhere else, before and after this mo- 
ment, Jesus announces the kingdom as to come. 
(Matt. xix. 23 ; Mark x. 23, 25 ; Luke xviii. 24, 25.) 

1 Luke x. 36. 2 John x. 32, 

8 Luke vi. 9. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 155 

pie ? 2 by the altar, or by the gift that is 
upon it ? " — childish casuistry upon which 
Jesus poured out his scorn. His blows 
were mortal, and the Pharisees allied them- 
selves with the Herodians to bring about 
his very death. Their hatred could be 
gratified by no less. They banded them- 
selves together ; in face of a common enemy 
adversaries become friends. The day would 
come when Pilate and Herod would be- 
come friends ; and already the Pharisees, 
"the pure," were making an agreement 
with spies in the pay of Antipas ; to-mor- 
row they would come to an agreement 
with the Sadducees, whom in the depths of 
their hearts they execrated. From this 
time, they had only one thought : " Death 
to the innovator ! " 

Jesus soon became aware of an incipient 
unpopularity, which could not but increase. 
He asked himself what could be the out- 
come of this opposition. Failure and defeat, 
even his own premature passing away, did 
not seem to him impossible. Once, when 
he was asked why his disciples did not 
fast, 2 he compared himself in his answer to 

1 Matt, xxiii. 16. 

2 Mark ii. 18 ff. and parallel passages. 



156 JUS US CHRIST 

a bridegroom, saying sadly, " The day will 
come when the bridegroom shall be taken 
away ! " 2 It was only a passing surmise, 
but its significance is clear. This allu- 
sion is the first ; Jesus then foresaw a pos- 
sible violent death. Up to this time all 
had been beautiful like a joyful marriage 
feast. " We have not fasted," the happy 
and peaceful disciples had been able to say ; 
and here was the master, the bridegroom, 
saying, "I shall be taken away from 
you ! " This taking away, this disappear- 
ance, seemed to him, if not certain, at least 
as very possible. 

Jesus retained a few personal friends 
among the Pharisees, but the bulk of the 
party became more and more unfavorable 
and hostile to him, and he separated him- 
self from them continually more and 
more. 

His Messianic ideas began, in their turn, 
to change their character. To the exterior 
drama now beginning corresponded hence- 
forth an interior drama which nothing in 
history at all resembles. First the pos- 
sibility, then the extreme probability, and 
finally the certainty of a violent and ap- 

1 airapejj. Mark ii. 20. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 157 

proaching death, — such was the new ele- 
ment which was about to enter into his 
previsions of the future ; and as his con- 
viction that he was the Messiah never 
weakened for an instant, as the certitude 
of this which he had gained at his baptism 
was final and unalterable, he began to con- 
ceive of a Messiah who might be perse- 
cuted and put to death, and, consequently, 
who might disappear before the advent of 
the kingdom. The association of these two 
ideas was something so strange and unheard 
of, — a violent death on one side, and Messi- 
anism on the other, — it was so far outside 
of all that a Jew of that time could con- 
ceive or imagine, that it is impossible for 
us to picture to ourselves the interior strug- 
gles which Jesus must have gone through, 
the painful surprises, the acts of abnega- 
tion, and the immensity of the sacrifice to 
which he was called. To give up all that 
he had believed, hoped, understood ! For 
long years he had believed, he had known, 
himself to be the Messiah ; he had the very 
clear consciousness that he had to perform 
a Messianic, that is to say, a royal task ; 
and this idea had been for him absolutely 
exclusive of that of suffering. And yet 



158 JESUS CHRIST 

he came at last to accept suffering and 
premature death, a death above all others 
ignominious and infamous. Ah ! it is cer- 
tain that we shall never sound the depths 
of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 159 



CHAPTER X 

INSTITUTION OF THE APOSTOLATE 

Tl rHEN these dark presentiments awoke, 
Jesus remained as secure as ever of 
the accomplishment of his task. Never a 
shadow of doubt, of his Father or of his 
mission or of himself, darkened his soul. 
The nation rejected him; so let it be. 
Well, he would cut loose from it ; and he 
decided to found a society of disciples 
whom he would send forth to prepare for 
the coming of the kingdom. When that 
should appear, the twelve tribes would be 
restored ; x therefore it was necessary that 
these continuators of his work, the future 
heads of the national kingdom, should be 
twelve in number. Jesus chose them from 
among the best of his disciples, and gave 
them the name of apostles. Some of them, 
who had been especially faithful, were 
naturally designated : the two brothers, 

1 Matt. xix. 28 : Luke xxii. 30. 



160 JESUS CHRIST 

Bene Johanan, 1 and the two brothers, 
Bene Zebedaiou, 2 were closely attached to 
him ; eight others, expressly selected by 
him, were added to these. It was not 
solely a sort of army of goodness which he 
created in order that immediately after his 
death the budding Church should be 
guided according to his Spirit, and the 
kingdom continually announced; it was a 
new and unknown institution which sud- 
denly appeared, and by its mere existence 
consecrated the rupture of Jesus with 
Judaism. It created a veritable schism. 

Jesus so deeply felt the gravity of the 
resolution which he was making, that he 
passed the night in prayer. 3 It was on a 
mountain which had taken the place of the 
one near Nazareth whither for so many years 
he had gone to adore his Father ; it over- 
looked Capernaum and the entire lake. 
During long hours he sought to know the 
will of God, setting before his sight his 
new project, his fears, his hopes, and the 
choice of the Twelve which he was about 
to make. 

The next morning he designated them 

1 Andrew and Peter. 2 James and John. 

3 Luke vi. 12. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 161 

and gave them his instructions. The Ser- 
mon on the Mount has preserved to us some 
scattered fragments of the discourse which 
he addressed to them. It is difficult to 
find in this collection of utterances, which 
do not always follow logically, the clear 
echo of what Jesus must have said to them 
at this decisive hour. He recommended 
to them humility, gentleness, graciousness. 
He said to them : " Ye are the salt of the 
earth ; ye are the light of the world ; a 
city set upon a hill cannot be hid." 1 It 
was necessary for them to become " chil- 
dren of the Father which is in heaven." 2 
He preached to them a " higher righteous- 
ness," 3 and said to them, " Be ye therefore 
perfect, even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect." 4 To these principles 
of pure morality, placing before their eyes 
for goal the new righteousness, divine 
sonship, perfection itself, Jesus added 
neither rite nor rule, and asked of the 
Twelve no practice. Later he added to 
these first precepts a short prayer, 5 accord- 
ing to the custom of the Rabbis of that 

i Matt. v. 13 ff. 2 Matt. v. 45. 

3 Matt. v. 20. 4 Matt. v. 48. 

5 Matt. vi. 9 ff. ; Luke xi. 1 ff. 
11 



162 JESUS CHRIST 

time, which was probably to be recited im- 
mediately after the Shema. For if Jesus 
imposed no new act of worship, he did not 
abolish those of which the Twelve and him- 
self had long had the habit; and if he 
suppressed fasts and ablutions, he always 
frequented the synagogue and recited the 
customary prayers. 

Jesus also gave the Twelve special in- 
structions. He took care that they should 
always know the hidden meaning of the 
parables, and he had secrets with them 
which they were never to communicate to 
any one. 

No doubt Jesus preached to the crowds 
and was understood by every one. Airs 
of mystery were always foreign to him, and 
his teaching has nothing esoteric. Yet 
there are certain things which he said u in 
the darkness," and " in the ear" of the 
Twelve. 1 In all this he followed the doc- 
tors and Rabbis of his time. The parables 
themselves, as we showed when speaking 
of the language which Jesus made use of, 
were in some degree enigmatic. If they 
put the highest religious verities within 

1 Matt. x. 26, 27 ; Mark. iv. 21 ff. ; Luke viii. 17, xii. 
2 f£. ; John xiv. 22. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 163 

reach of the humblest and the common 
folk, they did so only by heightening 
their curiosity, without always gratifying 
it. They were far from being immedi- 
ately comprehensible; sometimes the vul- 
gar did not immediately seize the sense, 
and Jesus, who wanted the Twelve to com- 
prehend this always, would explain the 
parables to them in detail when he was 
alone with them. 1 

Finally he sent them out two by two, for 
he still desired to save his people by the 
word, and stir up a religious and moral 
transformation of their nation. The apos- 
tles were to divide among themselves the 
twelve tribes, none others ; their whole 
mission was to save the Jews : it is the 
apostolate of the circumcision, as St. Paul 
called it at a later time. 2 

The Twelve then went about preaching 
during the lifetime of Jesus ; 3 they con- 
fined themselves to announcing the ap- 
proaching coming of the kingdom, 4 repeated 
the Master's teachings, and, like him, 

i Matt. xiii. 10 ft, 34 ff., iv. 10 ff., 33 ff. ; Luke viii. 
9 ff., xii. 41. 

2 Gal. ii. 7. » Luke ix. 6. 

4 Matt. x. 7 i Luke x. 9. 



164 JESUS CHRIST 

performed cures. Their manners and 
customs were purely Essenian ; nowhere 
in the gospel is the identity of budding 
Christianity with Essenism more strik- 
ing. All the counsels as to conduct which 
Jesus gave them are those which were given 
to Essenes about to travel, — to stop at the 
houses of brethren only, to pronounce the 
Selam, or greeting of peace, on entering, 
and by this sign to recognize true friends. 
By this salutation of peace they themselves 
were to accept hospitality. 1 They were 
to carry no provisions, no change of gar- 
ments; a single tunic, a single pair of 
sandals, was to suffice. All this is the 
purest Essenism. Let them go neither 
to the Gentiles nor the Samaritans; let 
them practise medicine, heal the sick, 
cast out demons, cleanse lepers, and 
let them do it all freely. 2 

In the view of Jesus the apostle was him- 
self ; and this he said in his instructions 
to the Twelve. 3 This creation of the 
apostolate therefore proves two things : 

1 Matt, x., passim. 

2 Matt. x. 8. 

8 Matt. x. 40-42, xxv. 35 f . ; Mark ix. 40 ; Luke x. 
16; Johnxiii. 20. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 165 

1. The desire of Jesus, in case of his own 
disappearance, to remain upon the earth 
in the person of authentic representatives, 
charged with the work of completing those 
preparations for the speedy coming of the 
kingdom which were to be interrupted 
by his death; 2. The desire to re-establish 
the twelve tribes of Israel when the 
kingdom should appear. 

Therefore Jesus communicated only to 
the Twelve his power to heal, to cast out 
demons, and to prophesy, 1 — that is to say, 
his entire function as Rabbi. 

The apostles' methods of healing were 
those of the Essenes, — anointing with 
oil and the imposition of hands. Their 
power to handle venomous serpents and 
drink poisoned beverages with impunity 
is also mentioned ; but the passage in the 
Gospels which makes this statement is 
certainly apocryphal, 2 and such powers 
were attributed to them only at a later 
date. It is even evident that their power 
to heal was limited, and sometimes attended 
with want of success. Certain cases of 
possession were too difficult for them ; it 

1 Matt. vii. 22, x. 1 ; Mark iii. 15, vi. 13 ; Luke x. 17. 

2 Mark xvi. 18. 



166 JESUS CHRIST 

sometimes occurred that they had not the 
needed knowledge and were unaware 
of the special process required to cast 
out certain kinds of demons. 1 For some 
of these prayer was indispensable, and also 
fasting. 

This detail shows that prayer was not 
always essential to the cure of a possessed 
person, and that, on the contrary, it was 
sometimes necessary not only to ask God 
to expel the evil spirit, but also to prac- 
tise a more or less prolonged fast, — a thing 
which Jesus had authorized his disciples 
to dispense with in ordinary life. 2 

Though Jesus communicated to his 
apostles alone the power to heal and to 
exorcise, it was the case that others 
attempted to cast out demons in his name 
without even being his disciples, and we 
are not told that they did not succeed. 
When the fact was reported to Jesus, he 
declared its authorization. 3 In fact, all 
methods were used for delivering those un- 

1 Matt. xvii. 19-21. 

2 We have already alluded to this passage, and said 
that the mention of fasting in Matt. xxii. 2, is prob- 
ably unauthentic (see page 137). 

3 Mark ix. 38 ff . : Luke ix. 49, 50. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 167 

fortunate persons who were possessed. We 
have seen above that men went so far as 
to invoke Beelzebub, the prince of the infer- 
nal regions, because, being the devil, he had 
all power over his subordinates. Thus do 
superstitions reproduce themselves always 
the same, and the most ridiculous inven- 
tions of the Middle Age were already in 
existence. 

Choosing the Twelve, Jesus founded a 
church, a community. He admirably 
understood the importance of action in 
common, its enormous power, and the 
invincible strength of union by love. 

This church, this community of the 
Twelve and of all who should join them, 
was, to bind and loose ; that is to say, it 
would have the right to permit and forbid, 
it could forgive sins, reprimand, warn. 
But Jesus added no code of rules to these 
promises and privileges. He gave no indi- 
cations touching assemblies of believers, 
and prescribed no ceremonies for the apos- 
tles to celebrate. Thus the primitive 
Church was to be instituted on the model 
of the synagogue, and the Twelve had no 
other form of worship than the worship of 
their fathers. 



168 JEBUB CHRIST 

This is easy to understand. Jesus' only 
care was to assure the life of his followers 
during the time which should intervene 
between his death and the coming of the 
kingdom, since it was possible that he 
might die before the kingdom of God 
should come. And thus, having instituted 
the apostolate, he confined himself to giv- 
ing his followers general instructions : he 
sent them only to the Jews, and it was 
enough for him to speak such words as 
would encourage them when he should be 
no longer in their midst. 

They would find their first consolation in 
the thought that the Holy Spirit was with 
them. When he, Jesus, should be no 
longer there, the Spirit would come, and it 
would be his Spirit, strengthening his own, 
for he would be always present with 
his faithful ones, though they might be 
only two or three gathered together. 1 

Such words and counsels were a great 
source of strength to the apostles when 
at a later day they recalled them to mind. 
Jesus had predicted truly, it was the 
Spirit of God which filled them ; never 
could humanity have produced by itself 

1 Matt, xriii. 20. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 169 

the works which they performed; and 
the supernatural shines forth through the 
whole history of the primitive Church. 

It is needless to say that there is no 
trace of the ecclesiastical Trinity in the 
teaching of Jesus, as there is indeed no 
trace of theology or of a confession of 
faith. But what St. Paul said at a 
later day in one of his apostolic saluta- 
tions, 1 naming successively the grace of the 
Heavenly Father, the love of Jesus Christ, 
and the communion of the Holy Ghost, and 
invoking these blessings upon his readers, 
was clearly drawn from the words of the 
Christ. The Holy Spirit is not a separate 
personality (it should be needless to say 
this, so evident is it) ; it is himself, Jesus, 
coming back into the hearts of his disciples 
to establish his kingdom by their means. 

It is impossible not to admit that Jesus 
was acquainted with Jewish theology, 
which made of the Holy Spirit a divine 
hypostasis, and identified it with the Word 
or Wisdom; 2 and it is for this reason that 

1 2 Cor. xiii. 13 ; and what Jesus himself said when 
he instituted baptism in the name of the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Ghost. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. 

2 Wisd. Sol. i. 7, vii. 7, ix. 17, xii. 1 ; Eccles. i. 9, 
xy. 5, xxiv. 27, xxxix. 8 ; Judith xvi. 17. 



170 JESUS CHRIST 

he insisted upon the Holy Spirit, not only 
in his teaching as the fourth Gospel 
gives it, but also in that of the first three. 
"Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit," he 
said, " shall never be forgiven." 1 " It is 
not ye who speak, but the Holy Spirit 
which speaketh for you." 2 " The Father 
giveth the Spirit to thern that ask him ; " 3 
etc. Such passages abound; and in this 
there is nothing surprising, for this was the 
point in Jewish theology to which at that 
time the greatest importance was attached. 
In fact, out of this doctrine issued the 
great question of the relations of God 
with the world or with intermediary beings ; 
and John the Baptist himself had already 
spoken of a baptism of fire and of the 
Spirit. 4 

When Jesus announced the coming of 
the Holy Spirit, he gave to him in the Syro- 
Chaldaic tongue a name with which we are 
acquainted ; he called him the Paraclete. 5 
The Jewish doctors had derived this word 

1 Matt. xii. 31, 32; Mark iii. 29; Luke xii. 10. 

2 Mark xiii. 11 ; Luke xii. 12. 

3 Luke xi. 13. 

* Matt, iii. 11 ; Mark i. 8 ; Luke iii. 16 ; John I 26, 
iii. 5 ; Acts i. 5, 8, x. 47. 
5 See Buxtorf, Lex. Talm, 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 171 

from the Greek paraMetos, which signifies 
advocate, counsellor, doctor who explains 
hidden mysteries. The Paraclete was so 
little a distinct personality that Jesus 
himself is thus called. 1 The Spirit, the 
Paraclete, was to replace him; and this 
would be his Spirit, it would be himself. 2 

As to a book to which should be com- 
mitted his teachings, Jesus never spoke of 
such a thing. We have explained why 
such a book was far from his thought. 3 
He had come to fulfil the Law and the 
Prophets, and not in the least to publish 
texts to be added to those of the Old 
Testament. 

Finally, he instituted two ceremonies, — 
Baptism and the Eucharist. 4 We must 
reserve this subject for our third volume. 
But a word must be said here concerning 
the meals which he took in common with 
the apostles, and with them alone. We 
believe that long before the institution of 

i 1 John ii. 1. 2 John xiv. 18. 

8 See chapter ii., " The Language of Jesus/' page 
69 ff. 

4 It is remarkable that Jesus, with the exception of 
a few interdictions like that of the oath (Matt. v. 34), 
or of divorce (xix. 3 f.), never laid down a single rule 
to be followed. 



172 JESUS CHRIST 

the Eucharist, which was established only 
on the last day, Jesus used to partake 
with the apostles of a meal which had a 
sacred character. The Pharisees had a 
habit of fraternal agape, with complete 
ablutions before and afterward, the bene- 
diction of each dish, and conversation on 
religious subjects ; and it is highly possible 
that the feasts to which Jesus was invited 
at their houses were of this character. 1 

However this may be, there is more 
than one resemblance between the frater- 
nal feasts of the Pharisees, who had insti- 
tuted fixed days on which the brotherhood 
should assemble to take a meal together, 
and the agapaz of the early Christians. The 
brethren celebrated those agapce as a sign 
of union. It is therefore more than prob- 
able that when in the course of his minis- 
try Jesus presided at the table around 
which were grouped the Twelve, he gave 
a special character to the gathering. We 
see him in St. John, a year before the 
institution of the Eucharist, 2 comparing 
himself to bread which nourishes and 
gives life ; and, according to certain pas- 

1 Luke v. 29, vii. 36, xi. 37, xiv. 1 ff. 
a John vi. 35 ft. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 173 

sages, he had a habit of breaking the bread 
at the beginning of a meal, giving the 
pieces to his disciples with a prayer of 
thanksgiving. The gesture which he 
usually made at such moments was pecu- 
liar to him. It might aid in his recogni- 
tion, 1 and the apostles kept in their minds 
and their hearts the memory of the solemn 
moment of "the breaking of bread" by 
their Master ; in the meal which he took 
with his own it was a sacred moment with 
a religious character. For that matter, to 
eat of the same loaf was always, for the 
Jew, a bond of union and intimacy. A 
son of Israel did not sit down at the table 
of a Gentile, precisely because such an act 
presupposed an entire community of feel- 
ings and ideas ; and it is to be understood 
how Jesus, who loved this common meal, 
who at such moments felt himself most 
near to his own and most closely united to 
them, must, at the moment of parting from 
the apostles, have felt the need of institut- 
ing a ceremony, a sacred supper, which 
would recall to their minds those which 
they had been used to take together, and 
which would perpetuate his mystic pres- 

1 Luke xxiv. 31. 



174 JESUS CHRIST 

ence, since by the Holy. Spirit lie would 
be always in their midst. 

Jesus must have felt all the more the 
need of drawing near to his apostles and 
living with them in close intimacy, in 
proportion as the rupture with Judaism 
was drawing daily nearer to its consum- 
mation. 

This rupture was destined soon to have 
an important result. Jesus was to become 
unsectarian. Up to this time he had not 
been so. He had spoken of Gentiles as 
strangers, and when he had sent the Twelve 
forth upon their mission, he had said, " Go 
not to the Gentiles nor to the Samaritans." 
Not long after he used entirely different 
language, going so far as to say that the 
Gentiles would pass into the kingdom be- 
fore the Jews ; * that the vineyard destined 
for the children of Israel should be given 
to others, 2 and in one of his parables 
clearly designating the Jews, he makes the 
king, who represents God himself, say, 
" None of those who were bidden shall taste 
of my supper." 3 

These were new words, and they reveal 

i Luke xt. 24 f . 2 Matt. xxi. 24, etc. 

8 Luke xiv. 24. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 175 

long and painful experiences. We are far 
now from the early time, far from the first 
preaching on the Lake and on the Mount. 
Opposition — a formidable opposition — 
had burst out under the pressure of events. 
Now the impatience of the people is, in its 
turn, precipitating these events. Although 
the change of hearts has not yet been 
brought about, Jesus makes it understood 
that he is indeed the Messiah, and his peo- 
ple, who are in no condition to understand 
the austere spirituality of his Messianism, 
will follow the Pharisees' example in part- 
ing from him. Jesus had already done 
everything to retard his rupture with the 
latter. He had hoped to avoid it, and 
when it took place he had faced all its 
consequences in creating the apostolate. 
It was thus that, with admirable energy, a 
conviction and assurance which nothing 
could shake, he prepared for the future, 
for what he called "the hour of the 
Father," awaiting it with confidence, what- 
ever might be the sacrifice which the 
Father was to ask of him. 

Thus, in his days of endurance, of care 
and renunciation, the Twelve were for 
him a hope and consolation. When he 



176 JESTS CHRIST 

thought of them, he thrilled with joy. 1 he 
commended them to his Father, he thanked 
him for having given him these u children," 
who knew more than the " wise and pru- 
dent ; " and when they told him of their 
success, when they said, "Even the de- 
mons are subject to us," 2 — that is, we have 
succeeded even in exorcisms, then, indeed, 
he saw in advance all the victories that 
were to be gained. — evil forever van- 
quished, and Satan overthrown appeared to 
him, like a vision created by his unfalter- 
ing optimism, as if falling from heaven and 
disappearing like a flash of hghtning. 3 

i Luke x. 21. 2 Luke x. 17. 3 Luke x. 19. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 177 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SUMMER OF THE YEAR 29 1 

JESUS was full of these thoughts when 
the entirely unexpected news of the 
death of John the Baptist suddenly sur- 
prised him. 

Up to this time, in spite of the opposition 
which he was arousing and the plots which 
were being formed against him, in spite of 
the delays to which the apparition of the 
kingdom seemed to be obliged to submit, 
he had remained in Galilee, not, doubtless, 
without solicitude, but expecting the hour 
of the Father and pursuing his work. The 

1 "We do not insist upon the figure 29. The pre- 
cision of the chronological researches which lead us 
to adopt it makes it seem probable ; but at such a dis- 
tance from the events, and with the imperfections of 
the calendar of the ancient Jews, nothing is certain. 
The essential thing is that we are here concerned with 
the last year before the death of Jesus. It can be the 
year 29 only if Jesus died in the year 30. 
12 



178 JESUS CHRIST 

death of John, so premature, so unexpected, 
accompanied by such horrible details, came 
home to him as a solemn warning. The 
possibility of a tragic and unexpected end 
was not then a chimera ; he also might dis- 
appear and in the same way. Herod began 
to appear formidable. 

A few trusty and faithful friends whom 
he had kept among the Pharisees came at 
that very juncture to inform him of certain 
things said by the Tetrarch about him. 
Antipas, hearing reports of Jesus and his 
popularity, had said, " This Jesus is John 
the Baptist risen from the dead." Now, he 
who had thus spoken was very powerful, 
and he was at Tiberias, whither indeed 
Jesus never went, but which was not far 
from Capernaum. 1 There was, then, reason 
to reckon with this dangerous neighbor. 
No doubt Herod, as unstable as vindictive, 
would not long think that this was John 
risen from the dead. But he had spies, 
sworn friends, certain individuals called 
the Herodians; 2 and Jesus learned that 
these Herodians had had interviews with 
certain decidedly hostile Pharisees, on the 

1 Matt. xir. 1 ff. ; Mark vi. 14 ff. ; Luke ix. 7 ££. 

2 Mark iii. 6, xii. 13; Matt. xxii. 16. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 179 

subject of himself. They had come to 
an understanding, something was being 
plotted; and, instructed by these various 
events, he formed a new resolution. 

First of all, he decided that he would no 
longer preach in the synagogues. Then he 
gave up his Capernaum home, only once 
again to occupy it for a few days or even 
hours, as he passed through the city. From 
that time he was to have no settled abode, 1 
and he began a wandering ministry, a life 
of continual journeyings, concerning which 
we have no exact information. He went 
first toward the northern frontier. It was 
a wise precaution. Phoenicia could offer 
him at need a secure retreat. He was also 
fond of visiting the eastern shore of the 
lake ; it was a nearly desert country, over 
which Antipas had no jurisdiction, and the 
Decapolis in its turn might prove to Jesus 
a secure and peaceful shelter. 

One day, just when he had taken refuge 
on the eastern shore of the lake, the people 
came in crowds to find him. 

It was to be his last day of popularity, 
and one of the days in which he showed 
himself the greatest. The people, who 
1 Matt. viii. 20 ; Luke ix. 58. 



180 JESUS CHRIST 

detested Herod, proclaimed Jesus their 
Messiah, and assigned to him royal honor. 
What, then, took place in his soul ? To be 
King! To be the national Messiah and 
acclaimed as such ! It was all that he had 
hoped, all that he had asked. Was, then, 
the work of preparation which he had be- 
gun drawing to its close? No, for the 
kingdom ought first to come. He was the 
Messiah, but he was to remain humble and 
hidden, and confine himself to a work of 
preparation, so long as the kingdom had 
not yet appeared. If Jesus had let the 
people have their way, it would have been 
a revolt, an armed insurrection, — a second 
such experiment as that of Judas the Gau- 
lonite, all that he had before refused at 
the temptation. And so he retired to 
the mountain, and passed the night in 
prayer. 1 

On the morrow, more than ever decided, 
he spoke for the last time in the synagogue 
of Capernaum. Making use of the symbol 
of the bread, which no doubt he had already 
explained to the Twelve, he spoke of eating 
his flesh and drinking his blood ; he prom- 
ised to satisfy the hunger and thirst of 
i John vi. 15 f£. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 181 

those who came to him. These expressions, 
being misunderstood, produced a revulsion 
of feeling in his hearers, and a crisis de- 
clared itself, — a formidable crisis, in which 
the opposition of the people was in its turn 
made manifest, joining with that of the 
Pharisees. 

As for him, he followed his thought to 
the end. It was a new thought, and had 
taken so much the more hold upon him ; 
and, full in the sight of a violent death, 
which might be its consequence, he drew 
the comparison of the bread broken and 
the wine poured out. Before eating bread 
one breaks it, before drinking wine one 
pours it out; and thus he completed the 
figure he had already employed, finding in it 
a figure of his death. At this moment, with- 
out doubt, he had the first thought of a 
ceremony commemorating his death, if in- 
deed it should be at hand and was to be 
by violence. 

The people refused to hear Jesus to the 
end; that took place in their minds which 
always takes place among the populace 
when hopes have been awakened in them 
and not satisfied. To popularity succeeds 
desertion, to enthusiasm hatred. The peo- 



182 JESUS CHRIST 

pie have these sudden changes of mood; 
the multitudes accuse those whom they 
have worshipped of having betrayed and 
deceived them. To avoid this crisis, Jesus 
must needs have met them half-way, per- 
mitted them to name him king ; but he 
could not. The hopes which he had awak- 
ened rested upon a misunderstanding ; the 
misunderstanding was bound to come to 
light sooner or later, and on this day the 
inevitable rupture took place. The dis- 
appointed multitude abandoned Jesus for 
always. 

He was not for a moment shaken, and 
yet what a pang and what a warning ! 
He had not succeeded in Galilee ; but in 
that case would he succeed elsewhere ? It 
seemed impossible, and that is why he 
spoke of the broken flesh and the poured- 
out blood ; and yet who could tell ? Suc- 
cess might even yet be achieved without 
death. He desired it, he hoped for it, he 
asked it of God ; he continued to hope and 
to ask even in Gethsemane. But whatever 
might be the future, that which would 
happen would be the Father's will. He 
should therefore be victorious; and even 
though he were to be overtaken by a most 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 183 

atrocious and ignominious death, still in 
defeat lie would be victorious. Even in 
death, even in martyrdom, victory would 
lie concealed. He did not know how, but 
God was his Father, and God could not be 
defeated ; his cause and that of his Father 
were the self-same cause. 

All these new ideas arose in Jesus' mind, 
crowding on one another, succeeding one 
another, and in perfect accord. He was 
convinced that he was to abolish the Law 
of Moses and establish the reign of God. 
The thought presented itself to him that 
he might be the victim of its establishment 
and of the accomplishment of a work so 
different from that which the people were 
expecting. But must not the kingdom be 
established by violence, by disturbance ? 1 
Then there would be nothing surprising in 
anything that he might have to suffer ; and 
if he were to die, so be it ! He would re- 
turn accompanied by legions of angels, and 
then he would found the kingdom. 

At the same time his ideal became that 
of universality. His rupture with the 
Pharisees completed this enlargement of 
his ideal. He declared that since John 

1 Matt. xx. 12 ; Luke xvi. 16. 



184 JESUS CHRIST 

the Baptist, the Law was no longer in ex- 
istence. 1 The true import of his words 
" destroy not, fulfil," appeared to him anew. 
He had already said that new stuff should 
not be sewed to the old, nor new wine put 
into old wine-skins ; here, certainly, was a 
new notion, a creative act. Eyery man of 
good will was a son of Abraham, 2 and the 
Law was made only for the sons of Abra- 
ham according to the flesh. All men were 
called to be sons of God; he was calling 
man, not the Jew ; he was preaching the re- 
ligion, the rights, the salvation of human- 
ity, and not those of the Jew. Mosaism 
had lived ; it had now only to disappear. 

Thus the most deeply rooted of Jewish 
prejudices disappeared, and forever, from 
Jesus' thought. Certainly he had lost the 
Jewish faith. 3 A magnificent prospect 

i Luke xvi. 16; Matt. xi. 6-13, ix. 16-17; Luke v. 
36 f. 

2 Luke xix. 9. 

3 It must not be forgotten here that the apostles 
for the most part remained very closely attached to 
Judaism, and that they never became aware how far 
their Master had gone. They believed him to have 
remained more a Jew than was the case. In his trial 
Jesus was accused of sedition, and the Talmudic 
meaning of this word is very clear. Those were 
called seditious who overturned the Law of Moses. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 185 

opened out before his thought: all men 
were equal, all were brothers; Gentiles 
also, even Samaritans ! — the kingdom 
would also be for them ! 

That which completed the enlighten- 
ment of Jesus on this subject was his 
journeyings in heathen lands. To see the 
" Goim," to visit their home, was a reve- 
lation to him. Up to this time he had 
seldom seen them, and had known little 
of them. In Galilee, only Tiberias was a 
Gentile city ; and Jesus never went there, 
precisely because it was not the custom to 
visit Gentile cities. But at last he had 
gone to Tyre and Sidon; he had seen 
temples consecrated to idols and an organ- 
ized worship ; in these two cities he had 
found himself in the very midst of pagan- 
ism, and it was there that he completed 
his detachment from the opinion which 
excluded Gentiles from the kingdom. 

His interview with the Canaanitish 
woman 2 marks the end of his former ideas 
about Gentiles. When this woman asked 

(Jerus. Sank. 14, 16; Babyl. Sank. 43 a and 67 a.) In 
these passages the Talmuds speak of Jesus, and de- 
scribe the form of procedure against him. He had 
been deemed seditious. 

1 Matt. xv. 21-28 : Mark vii. 24-30. 



186 JESUS CHRIST 

him to heal her daughter, he said, " I am 
not sent save to the lost sheep of the house 
of Israel." It was just what he had 
already said to his apostles, " Go not into 
any way of the Gentiles, and enter not 
into any city of the Samaritans ; " and a 
moment later, when the Canaanitish woman 
insisted, he declared, "It is not meet to 
take the children's bread and cast it to the 
dogs." The children were the Jews, and 
they alone ; the dogs were the Gentiles. 
And behold it was at that very moment 
that he was conquered by the faith of the 
sorrowful woman who was imploring him 
to save her child. Light rose upon him ; 
he declared that he had not found such 
faith even among his own people. From 
that day he entered upon a universal 
work; he did this in the most absolute 
sense, and this was a new notion, a creative 
act. 

He had some other contact with Gen- 
tiles. A few weeks later at Caesarea 
Philippi, during another of those excur- 
sions commanded by prudence which 
carried him beyond the reach of Antipas 
and the Herodians, he saw a marble tem- 
ple erected to Augustus by Herod the 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 187 

Great, and statues of the god Pan with 
his nymphs. 

But before these statues the Jew was 
very much like the Mussulman to-day 
in polytheistic countries; he is closed to 
impressions, it seems as if he were blind. 
So the rigorous monotheism of the son of 
Israel took from him all capacity of under- 
standing paganism. 

It is indeed remarkable that Jesus never 
spoke of idolatry or of paganism in order 
to directly condemn either, as did the 
Jews of his time who declaimed against 
idolaters. 1 

. What especially impressed him was the 
political subjection of the Gentiles. The 
Jew's sole master was God. Must he 
serve other masters on earth? Jesus 
had heard this great question agitated all 
around him ever since his childhood, and 
he knew that Judas the Gaulonite and 
others had taken it seriously and had 
revolted. He was firmly of the opinion 
that in one sense God alone is master, and 
he condemned the deceitful servility of 
the Gentiles, which betrayed itself by the 

1 See " Wisdom/' xiii. ff. In this book we have a 
model of pedantic and unintelligent condemnation. 



188 JESUS CHRIST 

titles that they gave their sovereigns ; 1 
nevertheless he saw in them brothers, also 
called to the kingdom, and to whom he 
from this time said the kingdom was to 
be transferred. 2 

Upon universal brotherhood he founded 
his absolute non-sectarianism. The concep- 
tion of a universal worship became his, and 
henceforth no barrier could separate him 
from the nations. 3 We have already 
alluded to the parables of this period, — 
the vineyard leased to others, 4 the prodi- 
gal son returning home, the servants going 
out into the highways to seek for the lost, 
and none of the first invited guests who 
made excuse permitted to taste of the 
prepared supper. The kingdom, which 
was still to come, would be given up to 
the Gentiles. " Many should come from 
the east and the west," and should enter 
the Messianic banquet-hall. The Jews 
would be shut out. Jesus did not say 
merely " the Gentiles too," he did not even 

1 Mark x. 42 ; Luke xxii. 25. 

2 Matt. xxi. 43. 

s Matt. viii. 5 f ., xv. 22 f . ; Mark vii. 25 f . ; Luke iv. 
25 f. 

4 Matt. xxi. 41 ; Mark xii. 9 ; Luke xx. 16. 



DURING BIS MINISTRY 189 

say " the Gentiles first ; " he went so far as 
to say "the Gentiles only." 

Let us not suppose that such a question 
was entirely new. Though the travels of 
Jesus in pagan countries definitely com- 
pleted his emancipation from sectarianism, 
though his interview with the Canaanitish 
woman, in which he used the most abso- 
lutely particularist terms, completed the 
opening of his eyes, he had for a long time, 
since the beginning of his ministry, been 
logically drawn toward catholicity. The 
very fact that he preached a change of heart, 
conversion to God, and nothing else, threw 
down the barriers which separated him 
from the nations. If an interior change 
sufficed, if to belong to the Jewish race 
was not necessary, why were not Gentiles 
called too? Jews had first been called 
because they were the chosen people ; and 
when he had told the disciples to go and 
preach only to the children of Israel, it was 
because they had the rights of the oldest 
son; but he had long since said the field 
is the world, 1 clearly showing that he made 
no difference between peoples. 2 

i Matt. xiii. 38. 

2 Matt. viii. 11, 12 ; xxv. 31-34. 



190 JESUS CHRIST 

He was also prepared for catholicity by 
his conviction that God is the God of hu- 
manity, and not the special God of Israel 
alone. This God, who is not a fatal being, 
killing, damning, and saving at his own 
pleasure, — this God, who is the Father, is 
universal. Though Jesus understood the 
Maccabees and Judas the Gaulonite, he 
took a stand high above them. Judas the 
Gaulonite had said, God alone is Master ; 
one must die rather than call any one Mas- 
ter on earth. The kings of earth, the 
powerful, the great, are masters, and must 
be respected ; but each one has his Father 
in heaven, and may feel himself to be his 
child on the earth; men are all brothers, 
Gentiles also are sons of the Father who 
is in heaven. 

Furthermore, if with Jesus there is much 
that is new, there is still nothing unex- 
pected, nothing which had not been pre- 
pared for long before ; not only did he draw 
the universality of the second part of his 
ministry from the depths of his own con- 
sciousness, — and we may find its origin in 
his first words, — it still came from the 
Old Testament. All the roots of this prog- 
ress were in the past ; from the time of 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 191 

the prophets the conversion of the Gentiles 
was one of the works of the Messiah and 
one of the signs of his coming. 1 Only 
Jesus had placed the conversion of the 
Gentiles in the future, and all his life he 
had maintained that the Jews alone were 
to be evangelized by the apostles. 2 

His ideas about the Samaritans had al- 
ways been very liberal ; on this subject he 
had early entirely parted company with 
his people. The hatred of Jews for Samar- 
itans surpassed that which they manifested 
to the Gentiles; they abhorred them. 
Jesus, on the contrary, had always been 
well disposed toward them. At the pres- 
ent time there was in his mind a very 
distinct impulse toward reaction. The 
parable of the Good Samaritan is very 
clear. 

According to this parable the neighbor 
is any man, even a Samaritan. So Jesus 
had thought as he was going up to Jeru- 
salem or as he was returning by way of 
Samaria. 

i Isa. ii.2ff., lx.; Amosix. 11 ff.; Jer. iii. 17; Mai. 
i. 1 ; Tobias xiii. 13 f . ; Syb. Orac. iii. 715, etc. ; cf. 
Matt. xxiv. 14 ; Acts xv. 15 ff. 

2 Matt. vii. 6 ; x. 5, 6 ; xv. 24. 



192 JESUS CHRIST 

One day, especially, when lie stopped 
for a few minutes to rest himself beside 
Jacob's Well, he had had an interview 
with a woman of the country which made 
a mark upon his life. To speak to her 
was already to give a proof of his liberal- 
ity ; but the expressions of which he made 
use clearly showed that the tendency to 
catholicity, which grew more marked in 
the middle of his ministry, and when he 
came in contact with Gentiles, had already 
been long latent in his soul. 

For many years Jesus had thus been 
embracing in thought the whole world, of 
which God was the Father, and believing 
that there was only one worship, belonging 
neither to time nor to country, — the wor- 
ship of God the Spirit, who wills that they 
who worship him should worship him in 
spirit and in truth. 1 

Such were the thoughts which were 
pressing upon the heart of Jesus during 
the few months of the summer of 29. 

He wandered here and there, desiring to 
escape from his enemies, and at the same 
time seeking to know the Father's will and 
awaiting his hour. Resolved to set out 

i John iv. 23, 24. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 193 

for Judea, to go even to Jerusalem and 
manifest himself to the world, he yet re- 
mained a few weeks longer in the northern 
countries, for he had important communi- 
cations to make to his apostles. From this 
time he had nothing to conceal from them, 
and he knew that his Messiahship was no 
longer a mystery to them. 

One day, therefore, he led them on the 
road to Caesarea of Philip, a brother of 
Antipas, from whom he knew he had 
nothing to fear. 

After having followed for a while the 
banks of the Jordan and crossed great 
marshes, the Master and his disciples 
quitted the stream and climbed the gentle 
acclivities of the mountains which close 
the valley of the upper Jordan at the east. 
Little by little they thus quitted the land 
of Israel, and entered the territory of the 
Gentiles. There Jesus was unknown, he 
felt himself in a foreign land; and alone 
with the Twelve, his intimacy with them 
became more close. He drew forth Peter's 
confession "Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God," 1 and immediately after 
revealed to them the secret which was 

1 Matt. xvi. 16. 
13 



194 JESUS CHRIST 

weighing on his soul, — he must die soon 
and by a violent death. He was to go up 
to Jerusalem, and there he would be con- 
demned to death. He foresaw it, an- 
nounced it, maintained it; then at other 
moments he hoped that it might not be 
thus, that his people would recognize him. 
Ah ! if Jerusalem welcomed him, he would 
found the kingdom and would not be put 
to death! 

Nevertheless, it was time to set out. 

This resolution to depart for Judea 
was one of the grandest which Jesus took. 
Doubtless no other issue was open to him ; 
but he had willed it thus, and what he 
now decided was to make of his death, if 
death was inevitable, the greatest act of 
his mission. 

He was more sure than ever of the com- 
ing of the kingdom. He always announced 
it as near, and declared that some of those 
who were gathered round him would not 
die until they had seen him coming with 
his kingdom or in his kingdom. 1 At a 
later time he declared to Peter — so certain 
was he of the near appearance of the king- 

1 Matt. xri. 28, x. 23, xxiv. 34 ; Mark ix. 1 ; Luke 
ix. 29. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 195 

dom — that he should have a public and 
brilliant recompense in this world and still 
another in the age to come. 1 The kingdom 
was then, in the mind of Jesus, both always 
future and always near. Foreknowledge 
of his death changed nothing of this ; and 
still, later, when he spoke of the cup which 
he Avas to drink and the baptism of blood 
which he was to receive, that is, when he 
predicted the near approach of a violent 
death, he still could tell the sons of Zebe- 
dee that they might be seated on his right 
hand, have the two highest places, when he 
should come in his glory surrounded with 
angels, and that the Twelve should sit 
upon twelve thrones. 2 It was not he who 
was" to allot them places, it was his Father ; 
but he denied neither the approaching tri- 
umph, nor the reality of the assizes of the 
apostles and of the approaching judg- 
ment, and this in spite of his death, at the 
very hour in which he announced it as cer- 
tain. The latter, in fact, would be only 
an event, an accident in some sort, an act 
willed by the Father, no doubt, and having 

i Mark x. 28-31 ; Luke xviii. 28-30 ; Matt. xix. 
27-29. 

2 Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke xxii. 30. 



196 JESUS CHRIST 

capital importance, but a fact which took 
away nothing whatever from his Messianic 
hope and his prediction of the coming of 
the kingdom. 1 

1 Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke xxii. 30. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 197 



CHAPTER XII 

FINAL DEPARTURE FOR JERUSALEM 

PVER since Jesus had found himself 
obliged to give up his work in Gali- 
lee, to part from those villages above all 
others beloved, Capernaum, Bethsaida, 
Chorazin, Magdala, — he had wandered here 
and there. We have seen him drawing 
near to Gentile countries, keeping at his 
command means of easy escape, if Herod 
should press him too closely, and at times 
even crossing the frontier and coming in 
contact with Gentiles, that " world " which 
up to this time he had seen only from afar. 
Everywhere in these journeyings he car- 
ried with him the thought " I am going to 
my death ; the Messiah may and even must 
suffer and die ; " and this notion, which was 
absolutely anti-Jewish and revolting to a 
Jew, completed his detachment from the 
religion of his fathers. He sought to instil 
it into the minds of his apostles, he never 
tired of talking with them of the necessity 



198 JESUS CHRIST 

of his death, he returned continually to 
the subject ; but he never succeeded in 
convincing them, for a Jew could not com- 
prehend such a thought as the Messiah put 
to death. 

He had learned many things during these 
journeys on which he had seen and spoken 
with Gentiles. It is certain that from the 
time of his interview with the Canaanitish 
woman he had rejected all Jewish particu- 
larism. We have seen this woman show- 
ing him how just and not unjust it is to 
give to the dogs the bread which the chil- 
dren refuse ; and he was already preparing 
and was soon to relate surprising parables 
of universal breadth 1 which give us his 
final doctrine on this point, — the parable of 
the Excuses, that of the Husbandmen, in 
which he said that the children of the 
kingdom, that is, its natural inheritors, 
should be cast out. Ah! it was because 
there were moments when he despaired of 
the conversion of the Jews, even while 
still hoping for it. It was with regard to 
this, as with regard to his death ; he affirmed 
its unavoidable necessity, and yet he had 
a secret hope that it might be avoided. 

i Matt. viii. 12 : xxi. 33-44. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 199 

As we have already said, ever since 
Peter's confession Jesus had resolved to 
make his death by violence the greatest 
act of his mission. Indeed, if it was in- 
evitable, it was because it was according to 
the will of God. Then it must be that it 
was to serve his work. This reasoning on 
the part of Jesus was in the highest degree 
simple and inevitable ; there was not, nor 
could there be, room in his soul for doubt. 
God was in his life and in his work ; it was 
the Messianic work ; and if he was to die a 
violent death, it was because it was God's 
will that the Messiah should thus die. The 
reading of certain passages of the Prophets 1 
could not but fortify this thought. He 
knew that it was the lot of God's ambassa- 
dors to be persecuted, 2 that martyrdom is 
the law of the conflict between holiness and 
the world ; and in this sense he found his 
death in the Old Testament, and especially 
in Isaiah. 

The celebrated fifty-third chapter cer- 
tainly had not taught him in his youth 
that the Messiah was to die ; but it is very 
probable that when he once understood the 

1 Isa. liii., for example. 

2 Matt. v. 12 ; xxi. 35 ; xxiii. 37. 



200 JESUS CHRIST 

necessity of his martyrdom, he would find 
the confirmation of the necessity in this 
chapter, and that thenceforth he applied it 
to the Messiah, — a thing which his con- 
temporaries did not do, and which he him- 
self had not done until this time. 

This is not all. If a violent death was 
not to be avoided, if therefore it made a 
part of the plan of God and was intended 
to serve his Messianic work, it was neces- 
sary, as we have said, that it should be 
accomplished in Jerusalem. If he re- 
mained in Galilee, Antipas would bring 
about his destruction, and his death would 
be hardly noticed. He remembered what 
had happened to John the Baptist. Herod 
would have him also arrested, thrown into 
a dungeon, and then secretly done away 
with, ordering that he should be beheaded 
without witnesses ; and then nothing of 
him would remain. Jesus had seen the 
consequences of John's death; after the 
first impression of horror at the murder, 
no more had been said. 

Herod, who by his spies kept watch of 
Jesus, might even have him secretly assas- 
sinated, and the consequences of such a 
crime would be even worse : no one would 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 201 

know what had become of him. Some- 
thing else must be done ; since he was the 
Messiah, he must die in Jerusalem. He 
must not perish less gloriously than the 
prophets, and he would not draw back 
from that. It would indeed be easy to 
escape it all, to go out into Perea, the terri- 
tory of Herod Philip — if he wished ! But 
the inward voice, the voice of the Father, 
said to him, " No prophet dies out of Jeru- 
salem." And, besides, Jerusalem attracted 
him ; he would once more try to win over 
the rebellious city, 1 as he had already so 
often tried. Who could tell? Perhaps 
he would succeed in the end ! And then 
he would be welcomed, and his death 
would not be necessary to his work! 

Before all things, let the Father's will be 
done ; for the moment his death seemed to 
him very necessary, quite inevitable. And 
he was constantly speaking of it. " They 
will kill the Son of man," he would say to 
his disciples. The thought pursued him, 
— he often repeated the same words, — 
" They will kill the Son of man ; they will 
kill him." 2 

i Luke xiii. 33. 

2 aTTOKTtvovaip o.vt6v. Matt. xvi. 21, xvii. 22, 23; 
Mark ix. 31, x. 34 ; Luke xviii. 33 ; etc., etc. 



202 JESUS CHRIST 

If he should be arrested in Jerusalem 
and regularly condemned, how would he 
die ? No doubt by stoning : that was most 
probable ; it was thus that his people put 
to death false prophets and heretics. He 
could not yet even dream that by a dex- 
terous manoeuvre they might lay off upon 
Pilate all the odium of his execution ; that 
the Jews would not have the courage to 
sentence him, and would find means, by 
false swearing, to cause Jesus to be con- 
demned by the Procurator. It was prob- 
ably at the last moment that the Sadducees 
had the cowardice to ask Pilate to pro- 
nounce sentence, or, if they had decided in 
advance to do this, they naturally kept to 
themselves the shameful secret. 1 

1 I have shown, in Palestine au temps de Jesus 
Christ (5th edition, page 103 1), that the words "It 
is not lawful for us to put any man to death " were 
merely a bit of flattery for Pilate. The Jews, if they 
had chosen, might have executed their own sentence of 
death, and in that case Jesus would hare been stoned. 
In predicting his own death Jesus made use of the 
word "crucified" only twice (Matt. xx. 19; xxvi. 2). 
Everywhere else he simply said that he would be put 
to death. Mark and Luke knew no other expression, 
and the word " crucified " would very naturally have 
been substituted (post eventum) for the words "put to 
death" by the author of the first Gospel. If it be 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 203 

And now this grave question presents 
itself: What significance did Jesus give 
to his violent death? — for he certainly 
held that it had significance. Considering 
it as willed by God, it was necessarily, as 
we have said, of capital importance in his 
work. 

Let us try to reply to this question ; and 
first let us recall to mind what work Jesus 
had to do. He had to prepare, by a change 
in men's hearts, for the coming of the king- 
dom of God. In this work, which had been 
the very soul of his ministry in Galilee, he 

absolutely required that the words be deemed authen- 
tic, it may be observed that these two predictions 
belong to the very last days, and at that moment 
Jesus may very well have had a presentiment that the 
last ignominy of being delivered " to the wicked," as 
he called them, that is, the Gentiles, was reserved for 
him, and that in that case he should die on the cross. 
If he already knew that he was to die during the 
Feast, he might foresee that the Jews would not dare 
not to refer the matter to Pilate, who always came to 
Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. As to the ex- 
pression, " If any one will be my disciple, let him take 
up his cross" (Luke ix. 23), it represents supreme 
abnegation, perfect renunciation, but does not neces- 
sarily argue that Jesus knew that he was to be cruci- 
fied. Death by the cross was so frequent that Jesus 
might speak of bearing the cross without necessarily 
foreseeing his own crucifixion. 



204 jesus cueist 

had not succeeded. Notwithstanding his 
temporary success, he had not obtained by 
his teaching that conversion, that new birth, 
that change of hearts and lives, which he 
sought. Quite the contrary, he had been 
rejected. 

None the less did he continue to declare 
that the conditions of entrance into the 
kingdom were such as he had always 
pointed out. His failure, though it might 
lead even to his condemnation to death, 
had changed nothing of all that. 

In the beginning, when he had said, 
" Come unto me and I will give you rest," 
that is to say, " I will prepare you to enter 
the kingdom, I will give you eternal life, 
I will save you," he naturally said nothing 
about his violent death, because he as yet 
knew nothing about it. All his sayings 
up to this time had thus implied that 
each one would find in him the satisfaction 
of his religious needs, rest, peace, life, 
without any reference to his death, and 
solely because he was the Messiah prepar- 
ing for the coming of the kingdom. 

Now that he understood that death 
was probably inevitable and necessary, 
he changed nothing in his teachings as 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 205 

to the conditions of entrance into the 
kingdom. His language remained the 
same. The announcement of his death 
had nothing to do with his preaching of 
the kingdom. Jesus continued to his 
last day to specify the same conditions 
of entrance into the kingdom of God, — 
repentance, conversion, the fulfilling of 
God's will. Especially were works of 
charity a means of entrance. One day, 
describing the last Judgment, he declared 
— and this at the very close of his life — 
that they who should enter eternal life 
would be those who had visited the sick, 
the prisoner, and the poor, who had 
given food to the hungry and drink to 
the thirsty ; that is, such as had done 
good deeds. 1 These would have their 
"reward" in heaven. He said to a rich 
young man, at the very time of his last 
journey to Jerusalem, that to obtain eternal 
life he must " keep the commandments." 2 
Still a little later he gave the same answer 
to a Scribe who asked him the same ques- 
tion. 3 In both cases he insists upon salva- 

1 Matt. xxv. 31-46. See chapter iii. page 39 f., 
where we have already developed this thought. 

2 Mark x. 17 f . 8 Luke x. 25 f . 



206 JESUS CHRIST 

tion by acts, — selling his goods for one, 
showing mercy to a Samaritan for the 
other, — in other words, to show by their 
works that they had a new heart. -He 
never said that his death wonld open the 
doors of the kingdom or that it was to be 
a means of having them opened. 

What, then, is the place of his death 
in his work? We must recognize that, 
so to speak, Jesus never answered this 
question; for though he often predicted 
his death, — though the words " The Son 
of man shall be rejected, scoffed at, put 
to death," were continually upon his lips, 
betraying the heavy foreboding, the inward 
anguish, of his soul, — he seldom explained 
himself as to the meaning which he gave 
these words. 

Still, let us try to picture to ourselves 
what was passing in his mind when he 
thought thus of his approaching disap- 
pearance. Let us abstract ourselves from 
our modern ideas and all our religious 
education, in which we have been taught 
that Jesus died upon the cross for us, — 
a thing indeed perfectly true, but needing 
to be explained and understood. Let us 
put ourselves in the first century, a year 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 207 

before the death of Jesus, at the time when 
death begins to appear to him more and 
more probable. He no longer greatly 
hopes that his people will be converted 
by hearing his words. He still hopes for 
it at times ; a change of feeling may take 
place. And yet it is certain that his 
work of reformation, that enterprise which 
with such confidence he had undertaken, 
has failed. His words and miracles do 
not suffice. And so, what more can he 
do ? Of two things, one, — either give up 
his mission or be ready for anything, even 
for death. There is no middle path ; he 
must choose between these. 

We may say with assurance that Jesus 
never so much as put to himself this 
question, because in his view his mission 
was to do his Father's will, and that will 
was made manifest to him by the events 
of his life. The path of obedience which 
had been his from the earliest day would 
remain his without the slightest hesitation 
or wavering. 

Now, upon this path which he was 
following, he had made a marvellous pro- 
gress ; and he had made it all at once, 
by a single step, — a giant stride forward. 



208 JESUS CHRIST 

He had entered upon a new stage ; reali- 
ties hitherto unknown uprose before him, 
realities more stern than those which had 
confronted him in the days of the desert 
temptation. At that time he had created 
a Messianic ideal which was to be de- 
tached from Jewish superstition and fanat- 
icism. He had emerged from the desert 
the spiritual and moral Messiah; now, 
from the trials through which he had 
passed, loss of popularity, openly mani- 
fested hatred of the Pharisees, of Herod, 
of the people themselves, he came forth 
the Messiah who must suffer, sacrifice him- 
self, go forward even to martyrdom and 
death. His death should be the crown 
and the capital work of his life. For 
the first time he understood this and 
understood it perfectly. But what a 
change ! "What an overthrow of all that 
he had believed, lived, understood, of all 
that up to this time had been the Father's 
will ! 

It is exceedingly remarkable that the 
faith of Jesus in himself and his work 
remained absolutely true to itself. He 
added to it a new element, the acceptance 
of a violent and nearly approaching death, 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 209 

that is, the entire renunciation of all that 
up to this time had been the strength and 
the joy of his life ; for he had expected — 
he the Messiah — that during his lifetime, 
in a few years, the kingdom of God would 
be manifested. His faith in his work 
had been faith in the efficacy of his words 
and his cures. Now that he no longer 
believed in the efficacy of his words, he 
believed in that of his death. This faith 
in his death (if the expression may be 
permitted) had become faith in his work. 
No doubt, as we have just said, he hoped 
against all hope ; a change in the popular 
disposition remained possible to the very 
last minute, 1 but he hardly counted upon 
it any longer. He said, "I must be put 
to death," — must, because the Father so 
wills. The whole change in his thought 
is to be explained by submission to the 
Father's will ; and thus that which would 
naturally discourage him, make him lose 
faith in himself, on the contrary strength- 
ened him. The religious authorities were 

1 In our first volume we showed that the cry in 
Gethsemane, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup 
pass from me," has no meaning if it does not signify, 
' If it be possible, let my Messianic work be otherwise 
accomplished. " 

14 



210 JESUS CHRIST 

threatening him, the official world which 
had seemed to be the true representative 
of the thought of God, and which he had 
hoped to convert, would do everything to 
compass his destruction, and, instead of 
saying to himself, " I was mistaken," he 
saw in their hatred the fulfilment of the 
will of God. It was the Father's will 
that he should be conquered; it was in 
defeat that his victory was to consist. 
Never had Jesus been more sure of him- 
self than in this crisis, which bade fair to 
overthrow all his hopes, and which in fact 
did overthrow them, but without over- 
throwing him. 

There he was, abandoned by the people, 
rejected by every one, alone, misunder- 
stood, a wanderer, with a violent death 
looming up before him, probable and near 
at hand. Must he not have said, under 
such circumstances, that the Messianic 
time was still far off, placing its realization 
in a far distant future ? Quite the con- 
trary: with superhuman faith and cour- 
age he affirmed that all things had been 
committed to him by the Father. 1 Far 
from being discouraged after so many 
1 Matt. xi. 27. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 211 

sterile efforts, he set down the popular 
desertion to the account of the sufferings 
willed by the Father for the salvation of 
his nation and the world. 

This unalterable confidence of Jesus in 
his work, his Father, and himself is cer- 
tainly supernatural. Death appeared be- 
fore him, the abrupt and tragic end, taking 
him in the opening of his work, overtaking 
and overpowering him in full activity ; and 
he had not a shadow of hesitation, because 
God was with and in him. There is 
enormous strength, as a proof of the divine 
nature of Jesus, in this assurance which 
no external event could disturb. What! 
he was to die, to be taken away, and still 
remain the Messiah ! He would still be the 
Judge of the world, the founder of the 
kingdom of God ! He would remain all 
that he had said, take back not a single 
particular; would always be thus sure of 
himself, of God, and of the truth ! 

But did he give any particular signifi- 
cance to his death? Let us see how his 
future teachings answer to this question. 
He considered his death as decreed by 
the Father, — a decision of the Father very 
distinct from his own, with regard to him, 



212 JESUS CHRIST 

Jesus, — and he would accept it, not without 
conflict and anguish, but always declaring 
that he would do what God willed. 

Allusions to his death, though unex- 
plained, are constant from the moment at 
which we have now arrived. He must 
" take account of his forces," " lose his life 
to save it," die like a corn of wheat in 
order to bear fruit, 1 " be servant of all in 
order to be great." 2 We have a right to 
suppose that Jesus was here speaking from 
experience and applying these words to 
himself. It was he who was taking ac- 
count of his army before undertaking the 
great battle, taking account of his posses- 
sions before building the tower on which 
so much must be spent ; it was he who 
was losing his life in order to save it and 
his work ; it was he who could die like the 
grain of wheat in order to bear fruit, he 
who would be humble and servant of all 
and thus would, be truly great. He had 
sown, the sowing had been hard and pain- 
ful, and now the furrow which he had 
traced must be watered with his blood; 
but his faith in the final triumph remained 
the same. He did not know the day of the 

i John xii. 24. 3 Matt. xx. 20-28. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 213 

triumph, — God alone knew that date, 1 — 
but he was expecting it ; he believed in its 
speedy coming; and in our third volume 
we shall show that the apocalyptic visions 
of his last days say nothing that Jesus 
might not have said at the opening of his 
ministry, when he promised the kingdom 
to the lowly, the thirsting, the meek, and 
the afflicted. 

Jesus, then, saw in his death an act of 
devotion necessary to the coming of the 
kingdom. Whether he died by crucifixion 
or stoning, his blood would be none the 
less poured out, as he himself said at a 
later time, repeating an expression by 
which his people spoke of death. To pour 
out the blood of any one was to kill him, 
for they said, " The blood is the life." 

Jesus accepted the sacrifice of life which 
the Father asked : he offered himself, he 
gave his life for the sheep, as a good shep- 
herd should do. 2 The wolf was Satan, the 
Devil, who exercised an immense power 
and held men in bondage. The world 
belonged to him ; he was its prince. The 
Son of man had come to minister, to offer 
himself up, to give his very life as a ran- 

1 Mark xiii. 32. 2 John x. 11. 



214 JESUS CHRIST 

som to the Prince of Darkness, that he 
might snatch men from this slavery. He 
was the good shepherd, and he gave his 
life as a ransom to the wolf, the ravishing 
foe that was carrying away the sheep. 1 

1 It seems impossible to interpret otherwise the 
passage (Mark x. 45 and Matt. xx. 28), " The Son of 
man is come not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister and to give his life a ransom for many." It 
must first be asked if Jesus made use of a word 
signifying precisely what we understand by ransom, 
that is to say, the sum paid to free a prisoner. This 
is by no means certain. We may remark, first of all, 
that in the Greek Xvrpov Sovvcu Ouri is analogous to 
airo\vTpw(rai, that is, set free, deliver, with no stipula- 
tion .as to the mode of deliverance. But this obser- 
vation is not enough, for Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and 
it is certain that in order perfectly to understand 
the word "ransom" we need to know what was the 
Aramasan word he used. In general, a sound exegesis 
of the important words of Jesus can only be made by 
translating them back into Aramaean, and seeking to 
recover the original phrase as it issued from his lips, 
before being translated by his disciples into Greek. 
As to the passage now occupying us, the question is 
difficult to solve. Jesus had several words at his dis- 
posal. If we were sure that \vrpov represented in the 
thought of Jesus the kopher of the sacerdotal legisla- 
tion (applied to the sacrifice), we might give another 
interpretation than " ransom," for the Hebrew sacri- 
fice was never a ransom. But (1) \vrpov represents 
in the LXX. many other words besides kopher, for 
example, the derivatives of a verb which signifies 
"redeem" (Lev. xix. 20; Exod. xxi. 30), or it serves to 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 215 

Another passage must be noted. On 
the eve of his death, when instituting the 

translate the word " price " (Isa. xlv. 13). (2) Kopher in 
the older parts of the Old Testament designates the 
money fine paid by the murderer to the family of his 
victim. In this sense it is truly a ransom, a buying 
back (Exod. xxi. 30 ; cf . Num. xxxv. 31, 32). (3) Jesus 
spoke Aramaic, and this language has other words 
besides that corresponding to kopher which serve to ren- 
der the Greek \vrpou ; for example, in the passage which 
occupies us (Matt. xx. 28; Mark x. 45), the Peschito 
makes use of a word whose root signifies " save " and 
also " ransom." Let us admit, in spite of these un- 
certainties, that Jesus made use of a word clearly 
signifying " ransom." In this case we affirm that there 
can be no question in his thought of a ransom to pay 
to God. Jesus never represented God as a creditor 
demanding to be paid, still less as a master exacting a 
ransom before delivering up his slaves or his prisoners. 
Jesus always taught that God is a Father forgiving 
his children without requiring anything else from 
them than their own forgiveness of their brothers. 
He considered sin as a debt contracted toward God ; 
he calls it a debt in so many words, and he always de- 
clared that God wholly forgives us this debt. He asks 
of us only one thing, that we ourselves shall pardon 
those who have sinned against us. Let the reader 
look up the following passages, Matt. vi. 12, 14, xviii. 35, 
Luke xi. 4, Mark xi. 25, Luke vi. 37, etc., etc., and es- 
pecially read the parable of the merciless servant 
(Matt, xviii. 24 ff.), and he will see that there is per- 
haps no teaching which Jesus gave more constantly, 
more clearly, and upon which he more insisted, than 
this. The ransom of which he speaks in a single 
passage cannot therefore be paid to God. He for- 



216 JESUS CHRIST 

Lord's Supper, Jesus said that his blood, 
which was about to be shed, was "the 
blood of the new covenant, shed for many, 
for the remission of sins." 1 Speaking thus, 
he alluded to a passage in the Law. 2 Moses, 
after having given the Law to the people, 
sprinkled them with blood, saying, " This 
is the blood of the covenant which God 
has made with you." Jesus then solemnly 
affirmed to his apostles that he was about 
to pour out his blood to cement a new 
covenant, a covenant which would replace 

gives the whole debt ; he extends mercy, he exacts no 
ransom. It would be impossible, indeed, to falsify a 
whole teaching with a single passage. Whatever may 
be the meaning of the word "ransom" in the verse which 
occupies us, it cannot weaken the very clear declara- 
tions as to the freedom of the Father's forgiveness 
with which the teaching of Jesus is filled. It is with 
this passage as with the saying to the Pharisees when 
Jesus appears to announce the kingdom of God as 
present ; it cannot alter the fact that everywhere else, 
at the end as well as at the beginning of his ministry, 
Jesus announces it simply as to come. It is the same 
again with his reply to the messengers of John the 
Baptist, when he seems to accord to his miracles an 
apologetic value, when we know distinctly by his 
whole attitude that he gave them none in the least. 

1 Matt. xxvi. 28 ; Mark xiv. 24 ; Luke xxii. 19, 20 ; 
1 Cor. xi. 25. We shall study this passage in detail in 
our third volume. 

2 Exod. xxiv. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 217 

that of Sinai. In this he gives no theologi- 
cal explanation of his death, but he does 
affirm its importance. 

Jesus, however, never considered his 
death as a sacrifice in the Levitical sense. 
He had found his sufferings predicted by 
the prophets, but he never said that his 
death was prefigured by the sacrifice of 
the Law, or in general by the Temple 
sacrifices. 

We have already had occasion to remark 
that we never saw Jesus offering sacrifices 
in the Temple, except that of the Passover 
out of respect to a national custom, and 
at a patriotic festival which he much loved. 
He commended the Scribe who said that 
to love God is more than all whole burnt- 
offerings. We have several times cited 
the word of God in Hosea, u I will have 
mercy and not sacrifice ; " for Jesus often 
repeated it, entirely making his own this 
idea, which was much disseminated in his 
time and which came in a straight line 
from the first chapter of Isaiah, that God 
asks of us, above all things, the gift of our- 
selves, and that the rites of the Temple and 
the lamb offered upon the altar are not 
essential. 



218 JESUS CHRIST 

When his resolution to go np to Jerusa- 
lem was taken, Jesus made haste to put it 
into execution. Many of his utterances of 
that time show a holy impatience to be 
done with it all as soon as possible. Did 
he hope thus to bring nearer the moment 
of the coming of the kingdom? Did he 
expect something new ? It is certainly the 
case that, comparing his death to a baptism 
of blood, he declared himself in haste to 
receive it. 1 It was at Jerusalem that he 
must receive it ; let him hasten thither as 
fast as possible. With " his face steadfastly 
set," as St. Luke says, he set out for the 
Holy City. 2 He quitted the North of Gali- 
lee, passing by way of Capernaum, return- 
ing for a few days to his own home, — that 
home where he was leaving so many 
memories, — seeing again his mother and 
brothers, who had left Nazareth and estab- 
lished themselves in Capernaum. They 
urged him to perform some Messianic act. 
Let him hesitate no longer ; let him go to 
Jerusalem, do some startling thing. Jesus 
refused, and the chasm that separated him 
from his own grew yet deeper. Some 
startling thing ! " A sign from heaven ! " 

1 Luke xii. 50. 2 Luke ix. 51. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 219 

as the Pharisees had often said to him ; then 
not one of his brothers nor even his mother 
understood him. No doubt he was to do a 
startling thing, but a very different one 
from what they thought ! 

To his mind, it was essential to go to 
Judea, and because of Herod he considered 
it important that no one should suspect his 
presence in Galilee. He therefore left 
Capernaum incognito, never again to see 
this village. Without being observed, he 
went down the Jordan valley, taking once 
more that road so often traversed, which 
follows the eastern frontier of Samaria. 
He had passed along it for the first time 
at the age of twelve years, and how often 
in the interval ! But this time he did not 
immediately follow the road to its end ; he 
would not yet give himself up to his 
enemies. He wanted a few days of liberty, 
and so he crossed the river. On the other 
shore he would be at rest : it was Perea ; 
no one would disturb him. 

But this stay was short, and toward the 
middle of autumn in the year 29 (we may 
indicate this date without too much te- 
merity) he recrossed the Jordan, arrived at 
Jericho, and once more began openly his 



220 JESUS CHRIST 

public life, without the least allusion to its 
probable issue. He appeared at Jerusalem 
in the early days of October, at the Feast 
of Tabernacles. There we shall find him 
again in our last volume. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 221 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE NAMES ASSUMED BY JESUS 

'"PHAT we may penetrate yet more deeply 
into the mind of Jesus, we have now 
to study the names which he gave himself 
or permitted others to give him, seeking 
to know in what sense he took them. 
Faithful to our method, we shall confine 
ourselves to interrogating and ascertaining 
the facts. 

In our first volume we showed that Jesus 
believed himself to be the Messiah from 
the time of his baptism. To follow the 
development of his thought about himself 
from that day forward, we must rest upon 
this historic basis : he believed himself to 
be the Messiah. This is the starting-point. 
He was born at the very time when men 
were expecting the Messiah; and this 
wholly external historic fact certainly had 
its influence upon his first decision. 

He had been arriving at it little by little, 
and at his baptism it became definitive. 



222 JESUS CHRIST 

At the temptation he had repelled the 
popular Jewish Messianism which was to 
accomplish a political revolution; it was 
by a wholly spiritual and moral course of 
action that he would prepare for the king- 
dom of God. Toward the end he took a 
further step : he was to be a suffering 
Messiah, persecuted and dying as a sacri- 
fice. We must now ask what consequences 
are involved in this affirmation, " I am the 
Messiah." 

One point must first be ascertained: 
Did Jesus deceive himself ? This question, 
which we put to ourselves in our first 
volume, here presents itself anew. Renan 
has said that Jesus, intoxicated by success, 
believed himself to be the Messiah. He 
was sane at the beginning of his ministry, 
he was no longer so at its close ; and his 
history, as Renan relates it, notwithstand- 
ing the carefulness with which he treats it, 
is the history of the growing excitement of a 
man who began with good sense, clearness 
of vision, the moral health of a fine and 
noble genius, and who ended in a sickly 
exaltation next door to insanity. The 
word "madness " was not written by Renan, 
but the thought may be found expressed on 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 223 

every page. Well, the facts are opposed 
to this explanation. We affirmed this in 
our first volume; here we must demon- 
strate it. The demonstration is so much 
the more necessary as the error in question, 
which is the capital, fundamental, one may 
almost say the only, error in Renan's Life 
of Jesus, has been widely spread abroad 
and received as truth. There is a general 
belief that Renan found the key to the 
great enigma, and with it explained Jesus 
Christ. Therefore Christianity is done 
away ; no one thinks of it any more. 
Now, what Renan discovered is this : Jesus 
succeeded, and his success dazzled him, 
blinded him, turned his head, and he 
became the mysterious apocalyptic per- 
sonage of the last days. 

Well, we do not think it is possible, with 
history at hand, to talk of the visible suc- 
cess of the ministry of Jesus. He was 
misunderstood by the people, and always 
less and less understood by them. They 
felt for him the merest passing admiration. 
The authorities, the leaders, the theolo- 
gians, for the most part held him in very 
small estimation ; and, above all, however 
great may have been his popularity in the 



224 JESUS CHRIST 

early days, it is historically certain that it 
continually went on diminishing. When 
Jesus cried, "Father, I thank thee that 
thou hast hidden these things from the 
wise and prudent and hast revealed them 
unto babes," 1 he recognized that these 
new truths were hidden from the doctors. 
They were hidden by the decision of a 
supreme and mysterious will. 

And later, when the crisis came, he 
kept his faith in himself. If he had 
been at the mercy of success or failure, 
guided by an external fatality, he would 
have given up the attempt ; he did just the 
contrary. In the hour of failure, pre- 
cisely when the people were leaving him, 
he declared himself to be the Messiah, 
with an assurance, a decision, a certitude 
greater than ever. We have pointed out 
the strength of mind, the faith and cour- 
age with which in the midst of the crisis he 
affirmed his Messiahship. This was the 
moment, as we have shown, when he 
might have said, "I have deceived my- 
self, I have lost all, the time of the 
Messiah has not yet come ; " yet, on the 
contrary, it was at this moment that he 
1 Matt. xi. 25. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 225 

gave a more precise form to his work. It 
was an external event, the necessity of his 
violent death, which gave birth to the 
inward conviction, " I am continually more 
certain, I am more certain now than ever, 
that I am the Messiah; " and at the same 
time he affirmed that all things had been 
committed to him by the Father. 1 

We have here, then, a solid historic basis 
for knowing the thought of Jesus about 
himself. He had a profound, invincible, 
all-powerful conviction of his special voca- 
tion. He was convinced that the future 
founder of the kingdom was already pres- 
ent in the world ; and, let it be carefully 
observed, he showed not merely strength 
of mind, the courage of the unfortunate 
in adversity (for him there was no adver- 
sity in the prospect of death, since it was 
willed by the Father ; death was good and 
essential to the Messianic work), he showed 
not only courage, but the certitude that he 
was the extraordinary personage expected 
by his people, yet at the same time very 
different from him, since he must die by 
a violent death. His consciousness, which 
may not be separated from his communion 

i Matt. xi. 27. 
15 



226 JESUS CHRIST 

with the Father, thus revealed to him what 
he was and what his work was to be. 

While affirming that he was the Messiah, 
and accepting the utterance of Peter, 
" Thou art the Christ ! " Jesus never 
gave himself this name, but called himself 
the Son of man. 

He did so in the very opening of his 
ministry, and the appellation aids us 
much to understand his thought about 
himself. Jesus attached to it extreme 
importance ; he constantly gave himself 
this name, he preferred it to any other, 
and he was alone in thus prizing it. His 
apostles never adopted it; never, with a 
single exception, 1 did one of his disciples 
give it to him ; it is probable that they did 
not understand it. The name contains, 
indeed, an element of the enigmatical. 

To catch its true meaning, let us remain 
in the field of facts. When Jesus took 
this name it had behind it a somewhat 
long past and a true history. Let us relate 
this history. 

The prophets, Ezekiel for example, made 
use of it to designate themselves. It was 
a term of humility. By taking it the 

1 Acts vii= 56. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 227 

prophet meant to stipulate clearly that he 
was only a man, although charged with 
a divine revelation. Thus, in the time of 
the prophets, this name in no sense implied 
Messianic dignity ; it was simply a proof 
that a man was the bearer of a higher 
revelation. 

Daniel, who came afterward, gave an 
entirely different meaning to the epithet 
" Son of man." This prophet declared 1 
that after the four empires represented by 
the four animals the Messianic kingdom 
would appear, represented by a Son of man. 
The Ancient of Days would confer upon a 
being like unto a son of man power to 
judge the world and govern it eternally. 2 
This detail is of capital importance ; this 
phrase of Daniel's impressed men's minds 
to such a point that in the time of Jesus 
the name Son of man had become a 
synonyme for Messiah, in his capacity of 
judge of the world and ruler over the new 
social state which was imminent. The 
proofs of what we here affirm are abun- 
dant; 3 and Jesus knew so well the pas- 

1 Dan. vii. 13. 2 Ibid, and viii. 15, x. 16. 

3 Enoch xlvi. 1, 2, 3, xlviii. 2, 3, lxii. 9, 14, lxx. 1. 
Cf . Matt. x. 23, xiii. 41, xvi. 27, 28, xix. 28, xxiv. 27, 30, 



228 JESUS CER1ST 

sages of Enoch upon this subject, and the 
whole theology of his time, that when he 
stood before the Sanhedrin he called him- 
self the Son of man in the very words of 
Daniel. 

There is, then, no doubt concerning the 
signification which Jesus gave to this 
name. He accepted the change of mean- 
ing which Daniel gave it, as indeed did all 
the theologians of his time. 

But the people did not. The new 
meaning of the phrase " Son of man " re- 
mained unknown to them. They continued 
to take it in the sense that Ezekiel had 
given it, which was the simplest sense. To 
them " Son of man " was what it was in all 
the Semitic languages, and especially in 
the Aramaic, a pure and simple synonyme 
of the word "man." In all these languages, 
in fact, the meaning of the word " Son " and 
of the expression "Son of " is extremely 
large. 1 Thus the Son of man was, in the 

37,39,44, xxv. 31, xxvi. 64; Mark xiii. 26, xiv. 62; 
Luke xii. 40, xvii. 24, 26, 30, xxi. 27, 36, xxii. 69; Acts 
vii. 55, 56 ; John v. 27 ; Eev. i. 13, xiv. 14. 

1 " Son of the devil " is found, Matt. xiii. 38 ; Acts 
xiii. 10. 

Son of this world, Luke xx. 34. 

Son of light, Luke xvi. 8 ; John xii. 36. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 229 

minds of the people, not the Messiah, but a 
prophet, a revealer. We can comprehend, 
therefore, how it was that the apostles 
never grasped the Messianic meaning of 
this name. In taking it, Jesus, who knew 
the ignorance of the people, knew very 
well, while giving himself a Messianic 
title and designating himself as the Mes- 
siah, how to veil from the eyes of the igno- 
rant the true signification of the word. 
Thus he could ask, "Who do men say 
that I, the Son of man, am?" 1 The name 
could be taken in two senses ; and Jesus, 
who knew this perfectly well, followed his 
usual method, not to destroy, but to fulfil, 
— to take a familiar traditional name and 
transform it, making of it something new 
and original for almost everybody. 

The Son of man was, then, in the thought 
of Jesus: 1. The Messiah; for the Rab- 
bis in their schools and the Apocalypses 
unknown to the people gave him that 

Son of the resurrection, Luke xx. 36. 
Son of the kingdom, Matt. viii. 12, xiii. 38. 
Son of the bridegroom, Matt. ix. 15 ; Mark ii. 19 ; 
Luke v. 34. 

Son of hell, Matt, xxiii. 15. 
Son of peace, Luke xvi. 16. 
1 Matt. xvi. 13. 



230 JEBUB CHRIST 

name. 2. A simple man charged with a 
divine revelation, a prophet. Jesus used it 
in both senses. He was the Son of man. 
the glorious and triumphant Messiah, in his 
eschatological predictions, and in his ser- 
mons to the people he was the Son of man. 
humble and poor, who had not where to lay 
his head. The name. then, answered to a 
process which Jesus loved, and which he 
set working in the parables, to awaken at- 
tention, and force serious consciences to put 
to Themselves an interrogatory. The name 
at the same time revealed and concealed 
him. It did not say everything, and this 
was just what he wished at the beginning, 
— without openly proclaiming himself as 
the Messiah, to do the work of the Messiah, 
and leave it to men to divine who he was 
and recognize him. 

The people gave him the name Son of 
David ; but the apostles never did. and he 
himself never took it. Yet it was one of 
the names of the Messiah, according to 
ideas which had been current since the 
close of the Asmonean period. It was 
admitted by every one that the expected 
Avenger would descend from David and 
be born at Bethlehem. St. Paul, for 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 231 

example, was convinced that Jesus had 
been of the seed of David according to the 
flesh. 1 To believe that Jesus was the 
Messiah was to believe that he was de- 
scended from David ; one was not sepa- 
rated from the other, and the two terms 
"Messiah" and "Son of David" were 
synonymous. 

Yet Jesus never took to himself the 
name of Son of David ; he permitted it to 
be given him. There is a shade of differ- 
ence there. He certainly accepted his 
Davidic descent, since he never either re- 
fused or consented to it, since he never 
denied or contested it; but he preferred 
not to take officially the name Son of 
David. It is probable that he wished by 
this means to thoroughly establish the fact 
that his coming reign would have nothing 
in common with that of a king like David, 
who would have armies and exercise a 
military power. 

There were, indeed, many things which 
Jesus did not repel, although he did not 
adopt them, which he simply let alone. 
Thus he permitted his disciples to baptize 
with John 's baptism at the time when he 

i Rom. i. 3. 



232 JESUS CHRIST 

was detaching himself from John, and was 
himself no longer baptizing. In the same 
way there were in his time ideas and opin- 
ions which he had no reason for rejecting, 
for in themselves they were neither false 
nor erroneous. They included nothing to 
be condemned, and yet notwithstanding 
he did not preach them and did not cause 
his disciples to preach them. 

Do, then, the names Messiah, Christ, Son 
of man, Son of David, tell us all that Jesus 
had thought about himself ? Not at all : 
they are merely to serve as a basis ; they 
are a point of departure, but there was a 
progress. Upon this basis Jesus built up 
a more complete notion of his person ; he 
summed it up under another name, that of 
Son of God. 1 

In taking the name of Son of man, Jesus 
gave himself a historic title, but did not 
fully define himself. He claimed this 
title solely to show that he was bringing 
the promised Messianic blessings, and to 
bring to mind his quality of judge ; but 
besides this it instructed his apostles con- 
cerning his person. He often explained to 
them who he was; and in these secret 

i Matt. xi. 27-30. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 233 

interviews, when he insisted less upon his 
title of Messiah than upon his relations with 
the Father, he took the name Son of God. 

To understand as far as is possible 
to us what this name signifies, we may 
recall to mind that Jesus exercised a great 
ascendancy over his disciples. He had 
gained them by a superiority which made 
itself felt; it was a moral grandeur, a 
charm, if one wills, but the charm of a 
singularly elevated nature. It had sufficed 
for him to say to them, " Follow me," and 
they followed him. They admired him, 
loved him, were carried away by him, 
subjugated, full of enthusiasm. Jesus had 
taken care to preserve that first impression. 
He had developed that attachment ; he had 
done more ; he had had private conversa- 
tions with his apostles on the subject of 
his person. He had sought to convince 
them of his perfect communion with his 
Father, and it was then that he gave him- 
self the name Son of God. It was essen- 
tial, in fact, that they should believe in his 
sayings as in the Word of God itself ; and 
if they gave themselves to him, it was 
because they were convinced that he was 
the Revelation of God, that the destinies 



234 JESUS CHE I ST 

of the kingdom had been confided to him, — 
in a word, because they believed in his 
person. 

In one of the most authentic passages in 
the Gospels, a passage drawn from the 
primitive collections of the discourses of 
Jesus made by the apostle Matthew, we 
find these words : " All things have been 
committed to me by the Father, and no 
man knoweth the Son except the Father, 
and none knoweth the Father except the 
Son and he to whom the Son will reveal 
him." * In this we come upon what Jesus 
used to say to his apostles in their secret 
interviews. He had had experience of the 
blindness of the sages, the doctors, the 
wise men;, he had just offered thanks to 
God for revealing divine thing's to children 
and to the humble ; it was he, the Son, who 
made the Father known to the lowly of 
this world, and the Father had put him in 
charge of this work, which was the work of 
preparation for the coming of the kingdom. 
For this reason he had given everything 
OA'er to him, — and no one but God can know 
truty the depth of the thought of Jesus, 
— and he added, " Come unto me, all ye 
i Matt. xi. 25, 26. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 235 

who are weary and heavy laden, and T will 
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you 
and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly 
of heart, and you shall find rest unto your 
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden 
is light." 1 

The extraordinary gentleness of these 
words is equalled only by their incredible 
assurance. We cannot and ought not to go 
beyond them. We can think no differently 
of Jesus from what he has thought of him- 
self, and what he thought we know only 
in part. Let us accept this ignorance. 
God has not permitted that we should 
know more of him, and very daring are 
the constructors of dogmatic theory who 
build upon a basis so insufficient. They 
must be reminded of this saying, " No one 
knows the Son but the Father, and no 
one knows the Father but the Son and he 
to whom the Son will reveal him." Then, 
no one comprehends God except Jesus, 
and he who believes in him and finds God 
by him ; and as to the Son himself, no one 
knows him but the Father. Thus, the 
nearer we live to Jesus Christ, the nearer 
we live to God. Let us not ask more, and, 
1 Matt. xi. 28, 29, 30. 



236 JESUS CHRIST 

in the name of this saying, let us not hesi- 
tate to call them too daring who formulate 
and make precise statements. It was the 
great error of the fourth century to have 
forgotten this passage. 

Jesus was the Son of God, but he seems 
never to have conceived the idea that he 
might be an incarnation of God. 1 The 
Jews calumniated him when they insisted 
that he made himself equal to God, 2 and it 
is certain that these expressions applied to 
his death — the blood of God, the death of 
God — would have horrified him. He was 
less than his Father ; 3 the Father had not 
revealed all things to him. 4 If he was 
Son of God in a special sense, he was that 
as all men are or may become his sons. 5 
We cannot go further without entering the 
domain of dogmatics, and we abide by the 
expression " divine sonship." Already dur- 
ing the eighteen years of his preparation at 

1 Matt. xix. 17 ; Markx. 18 ; Luke xviii. 19. 

2 John v. 18 ff., x. 33 f. 3 John xiv. 28. 
4 Mark xiii. 31. 

6 Matt. v. 9, 45 ; Luke vi. 35, xx. 36 ; John i. 12, 13, 
x. 34, 35. Cf. Acts xvii. 28, 29; Rom. viii. 14, 19, 21, 
ix. 26 ; 2 Cor. vi. 18 ; Gal. iii. 26, and in the Old Testa- 
ment, Deut. xiv. 1 ; Wisdom ii. 13, 18. All who are 
raised from the dead will be sons of God, Luke xx. 36. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 237 

Nazareth it was in his consciousness of 
being the Son of God that Jesus found the 
strength and joy of his heart, and because 
he felt himself to be the Son of God he 
was convinced that he was the bringer of 
a new covenant. It was because he felt 
himself to be the Son of God that in the 
days of the temptation he transformed the 
notion of the Messiah and that of the prep- 
aration for the Messianic kingdom; and 
upon this divine sonship, as we have shown, 
he built the idea of salvation. 

He was the Son of God in a special sense, 
for he said my Father, your Father, but 
never our .Father in common with his dis- 
ciples. He separated himself from the rest 
of humanity ; but this was only an appear- 
ance, for his purpose was to raise humanity 
up to himself, to create among men and 
within them that normal relation to God 
which sin had destroyed. To this end 
he preached the Father, he revealed the 
Father, he desired that humanity should 
know God as Father. He felt that he must 
awaken the sentiment of divine sonship; 
then the kingdom would come. 



238 JESUS CHRIST 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE REQUIKEMEXTS OF JESUS 

'"PO study the names which Jesus took 
is still not enough. 

At the moment at which we have arrived, 
at the hour when he was going up to 
Jerusalem, where his approaching death 
loomed up before him, we must understand 
the words which he spoke about himself. 
These words are of so imperative a nature 
that any elucidation, any development, can 
only weaken their import. 

They are such as were never before 
heard, and their character is absolute. 
Men must follow him. love him, serve him, 
believe in him, and give themselves to him, 
because he first gave himself, and because 
he brings to us not a new doctrine but a 
person, Ins own. Men must live only for 
him, love only him, prefer no other being 
to him. 1 

i Matt. x. 37-39, xvi. 24, 25 ; Luke ix. 23-25, xiv. 26, 
27 ; John xii. 26. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 239 

The replies which he gave to those who 
desired to follow him are equally distinct 
and uncompromising. 1 Where the ques- 
tion is of himself, what one owes to him, 
what his disciples are bound to do for his 
sake, he refuses all half-way measures and 
approximations. He asks for all; he will 
have all. Renunciation must be complete, 2 
all that one has, without restriction. One 
must flee from all that binds him to earth ; 
and his illustrations are frightfully strong, 
— one must cut off the hand, pluck out the 
eye, which cause him to fall into sin. 3 

One may take upon himself to renounce 
marriage, but this he does not absolutely 
ask. 4 In every case he requires a total 
renunciation of property, of the family, and 
the rupture of all ties of blood. 5 His dis- 
ciples must make no provision for a journey, 
not a change of clothing, not even a wallet , 
they are to live upon alms. 6 They must 

i Matt. viii. 21, 22 ; Luke ix. 59-62. 

a Luke xiv. 33. 

3 Matt, xviii. 8, 9 ; Mark ix. 43 ff. 

* Matt. xix. 10 ft 

s Luke xviii. 29, 30 ; Matt. x. 37 ff. ; Luke xiv. 26, 
27. 

6 Matt. x. 8 f . ; Mark vi. 8 f . ; Luke ix. 3 f ., x. 1 f 
Cf . Midrash Jalkouth sur Deuter. Sur. 824. 



240 JESUS CHRIST 

not prepare their defence before their 
judges : the Paraclete will inspire them and 
will be their guide throuok the world. 1 
They will be hated, persecuted. " lambs in 
the midst of wolves," but let them fear 
nothing. They are " of more value than 
many sparrows." 2 He will confess be- 
fore his Father those who have confessed 
him before men, and he will deny those 
who have denied him, when he returns in 
glory: 3 and this will be soon, for he ended 
by declaring that they would not have 
finished making a tour of the cities of 
Israel when the Son of man should appear. 
In fact, perfectly to comprehend the 
words in which Jesus demanded the renun- 
ciation of all worldly goods 4 and even of 
the family, we must remember that at that 
time every one was persuaded that the end 
of the world was at hand. Men did not 
even ash a question as to the time, no one 
asked himself when it would come, for it 

1 Matt. x. 20 ; Luke xxi. 14 f . ; Mark xiii. 11 ; John 
xiv. 16 f ., xr. 26, xvi. 7-13. 

2 Matt. xx. 21-31 ; Luke xxii. 1-7, i. 17; John xv. 
18 f ., xvii. 14. 

3 Matt. x. 32, 33 ; Mark viii. 38 ; Luke ix. 26, xii. 
8,9. 

4 Luke xir. 26 f . 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 241 

was expected to make itself apparent at 
short notice. It was an admitted, recog- 
nized fact, beyond all argument. A Jew of 
that time would say, The end of all things 
is at hand, exactly as we affirm that the 
sun will rise to-morrow, and it could not 
enter the mind of any one that the world 
would last perhaps during long centuries. 

In general, Jesus condemned the good 
things of this world only as they hinder 
the accomplishment of one's Christian 
duties. There were cases where he did not 
disapprove of them absolutely, but solely 
if they were the cause of one's falling into 
sin. 1 But there were also times when he 
said that earthly goods always do harm, 
that they are always a cause of falling or 
of sin. 2 ' These precepts can only be taken 
literally by those who believe that the 
world is about to perish. How otherwise 
can people literally put such teachings into 
practice, break all family ties, give all their 
goods to the poor, give up all that they 
possess ? There have been found holy men 
who said that it should be done and who 
tried to do it. They were mistaken. And 

1 Mark ix. 43, and parallel passages. 

2 Luke xiv. 25 ff. is explicit. 

16 



242 JESUS CHRIST 

yet would not the perfect man be he who 
should precisely conform his life to Christ's 
precepts, and meet all his requirements? 
Certainly; and therefore we see that an 
immense, a prodigious moral progress has 
been made by Christian humanity since 
Jesus Christ, and that the world owes it to 
his gospel, and particularly to these uncom- 
promising words. It is these precepts, 
holding up the ideal before our eyes, which 
have brought about this progress. Jesus 
said, This is the goal ; he made appeal to 
the power of the will ; he showed that man 
has within him divine forces whose power 
is without limit. 

Furthermore, when he gave these precepts 
he applied them to himself, and he had 
already made the sacrifice of his life. 
When he gave them, and when he thought 
of his death, he was looking to the beyond ; 
he was prophesying of the future, and gaz- 
ing with magnificent clearness of vision 
upon the frightful tempest which he was 
about to let loose. He was about to bring 
in the sword, three against two, two against 
three. 1 

1 Matt. x. 34-36 ; Luke xii. 51-53. Cf . Micah vii. 6. 
See also John xvi. 2 ; xv. 18-20. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 243 

Thus Jesus came little by little to the 
poiut where he could make the highest 
assertions concerning himself, his work, 
the future, the final triumph of righteous- 
ness and of his own person. His Father 
had given him power even to change the 
Sabbath. 1 Faith could do all things, 2 and 
nature would obey him who prayed and 
believed as it obeyed Jesus himself. 

Yet he never claimed that he was the 
creator of the world or its present gov- 
ernor; his highest claims were entirely 
Messianic : he was one day to judge and 
renew the world. To preside at the final 
assizes, where all humanity would appear, 
this was his office. 

But observe carefully all that this in- 
cludes. We are here at the highest point. 
Jesus was convinced that all who believed 
in him would receive the entire satisfaction 
of their religious needs ; and we must place 
here his words about himself in the fourth 
Gospel, although they have evidently 
undergone remodelling in taking on the 
Johannine form. John, the inspirer and 
fundamentally the true author of this book, 

1 Matt. xii. 8 ; Luke vi. 5. 

2 Matt. vii. 19 f . ; Luke xvii. 6. 



244 JESUS CHRIST 

shows the Christ as progressively revealing 
his person. Is not this an authentic mem- 
ory of the process which the Master fol- 
lowed with his disciples ? John puts into 
his month words which perhaps Jesus did 
not always actually utter, but which he 
was convinced he might have uttered, and 
which simply expressed what he was. In 
this St. John made no mistake. The 
Christ of the fourth Gospel in no respects 
overpasses him whom the Synoptists had 
made us perceive. Jesus was indeed he 
who is " the way, the truth, and the life." 
" He who hath seen him hath seen the 
Father." * 

This, then, is what he thought of himself 
at the time when the opposition which had 
already been shown became most violent. 
Men were turning against him, and soon 
they would put him to death; his work 
would be interrupted, his life shattered, 
his projects brought to nothing. But out 
of the depths of his consciousness and the 
certainty of divine Sonship he drew a new 
conviction : "If I die by a violent death, 
my death will be the vital moment of my 
work, the crowning of the preparation for 

l John xiv. 6, 9. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 245 

the coming of the kingdom ; out of it will 
come the salvation of my people and of 
mankind." 

In this work, which is neither dogmatic 
nor metaphysical and in which we confine 
ourselves to ascertaining the facts, we find 
ourselves led on, it is evident, to the es- 
tablishment of facts which are strange and 
utterly inexplicable if Jesus was not a 
being apart, above and beyond humanity 
as we know it. We speak of his require- 
ments ; perhaps we would better say his 
requirement, — for he made only one, which 
includes all the others : he asked that men 
should believe in him. 

It is sometimes said that Jesus asks men 
to believe like him, but does not ask them 
to believe in him. No ; precisely the con- 
trary is true. The facts are these : Jesus 
never said, " Believe like me," but, " Be- 
lieve in me ; " and he said it most especially 
at the period of his life at which we have 
arrived. 

At the present time, among Christians, 
no one believes precisely like Jesus. Do 
we believe like him when he believed 
that a deaf-mute was possessed by a demon ? 
Jesus adopted many of the opinions of his 



246 JESUS CHRIST 

time, and these opinions are not always 
ours. He was not a theologian; he had 
nothing to do with dogmatics or with 
criticism, for the very simple reason that 
these sciences did not exist at the time in 
which he lived. 

More than this : in the synagogues and 
at school in Nazareth he never heard any- 
thing about religious doctrines as being 
verities to be believed. Jesus never put 
to himself such a question as " Is this doc- 
trine true ? " and he himself never formu- 
lated dogmas of which he said, " These 
are verities to be admitted," nor did he 
ever put to himself a critical question con- 
cerning the religious affirmations of the 
synagogue ; nor did what is to-day called 
orthodoxy exist in his time. 

By orthodoxy I mean opinion conformed 
to a teaching fixed by religious authority, 
as opposed to heresy, to the opinion which 
parts company with the official and ac- 
cepted faith, and is in disaccord with it. 
In the time of Christ no one knew what it 
was to be or not to be orthodox, no one 
concerned himself with such a matter. 
Thus, upon the most important of questions, 
the person of the Messiah, every one had 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 247 

his own notion. One said he would be a 
political personage ; another said he would 
be exclusively religious. Some preached 
that he would remain hidden, living humbly 
among men ; others, that he would sud- 
denly descend from heaven in his glory. 
He will appear before this or that, said 
one; no, he will appear after it, said an- 
other, etc. In this matter no one had 
the slightest notion of putting forth an 
opinion which should be final and obliga- 
tory ; and it was thus with respect of all 
the doctrines. No one dreamed of formu- 
lating them, and therefore we have not 
been able in the preceding chapters to set 
forth the teaching of Jesus as a doctrine to 
be believed ; and indeed Jesus would not 
have wished it. 

Yet were there no heretics ? Assuredly : 
those who did not follow certain practices. 
A pious Jew did all that tradition or- 
dained. No negation would put him among 
the number of heretics, but those were re- 
garded with disfavor who did not accom- 
plish certain acts, did not observe certain 
rites, to which every one was attached. A 
Sadducee might quietly deny the existence 
of angels, of spirits, and of the invisible 



248 JESUS CHRIST 

world; if he offered the required sacri- 
fices, if he recited the Shema, if he ob- 
served the Sabbath, he was a Jew without 
reproach, and it was certainly a much more 
grave matter to eat pork than to deny the 
resurrection of the dead. Acts were more 
important than ideas. 

Never did any Pharisee take Jesus to 
task for his religious ideas, — for, once 
again, there were no heretical religious 
ideas, — and he was always permitted to 
preach precisely what he chose. But he 
was taken to task for breaking the Sab- 
bath ; his violation of it was the great and 
standing grievance of his adversaries. A 
Jew passed for pious if he went every year 
to offer the Paschal lamb, just as the 
Catholic is pious who does not fail every 
year to " keep his Easter." 

Now, Jesus, without precisely rejecting 
these practices, declared that they were of 
value only by reason of the sentiment of 
the heart, the inward faith which accom- 
panied them ; and as to his own religious 
ideas, he never said, " Admit them." 

In this chapter, in which we speak of 
what he required, we must also say what 
he did not require. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 249 

Let us recall to mind a few of the 
religious beliefs of Jesus: we shall see 
that, side by side with imperishable and 
eternal verities, they include outworn ele- 
ments which were doomed to disappear. 

His God was the God of his people; 
no doubt he had such an experience of the 
fatherhood of God, he felt it so profoundly 
and intimately and affirmed it with so 
much power, that one might say that he 
first gave it to the world ; yet it is none 
the less certain that he did not create the 
idea, and that the Old Testament teaches 
the fatherhood of God. 1 

The same is the case with his notions of 
sin and holiness. The Old Testament 
taught them on every page. 

These two notions are thoroughly He- 
braic. But it may be said that Jesus 
made them over, and, as we have shown in 
our first volume, the notion of sin is 
closely connected with his appearing. In 
his view, evil was getting the better of 
good. His generation was wholly bad. 2 
He who departs from God is dead and 

1 See, for example, the whole of Psalm eiii. and 
especially verse 13 and the Psalms passim. 

2 Matt. vii. 11, xii. 39 f ., xvi. 4 ; Luke ix. 41. 



250 JESUS CHRIST 

lost. 1 Sin is a debt contracted toward 
God, 2 and we cannot ourselves discharge 
it. 3 The sinner is a debtor. The seat 
of evil is the heart. 4 Jesus never speaks 
of original sim and assumes nothing innate. 
He says that sin comes from the devil and 
his suggestions. The devil sows tares. 5 
Moreover, evil comes from ourselves, from 
our desires. The eye, the foot, the hand, 
may cause us to fall into sin. 6 

Jesus, like his contemporaries, believed 
in demons. The devil is very powerful, 
for this world is his kingdom ; 7 neverthe- 
less he will not prevail. The kingdom of 
God is coming. Temptations come from 
Satan, and to say to God, "Lead us not 
into temptation, but deliver us from the evil 
one," signifies, "Preserve us from situa- 
tions where the devil can get a hold upon 
us." Sometimes Jesus rebuked demons 
because they recognized him. 8 That is to 

i Luke xv. 24, 32. 

2 Matt. vi. 12. See the Greek text. 

3 Matt, xviii. 25 f. ; Luke vii. 41, 42. 

4 Matt. xt. 17-20, xvi. 41 ; Mark xvii. 21 f. 

5 Matt, xiii. 19, 25, 38 f . ; Luke xxii. 31; John 
viii. 44. 

6 Matt. y. 30, xviii. 8 ; Mark xi. 43. 

7 Matt. xii. 26. 

8 Mark i. 25 ; Luke iv. 35, 41, etc. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 251 

say, that demons, being powers of the 
invisible world, knew everything, and 
among others immediately recognized the 
Messiah in the humble form which he had 
chosen. Jesus seems also to have said 
nothing original concerning angels. He 
always spoke of them in the plural. They 
were to be the servitors of the Son of man 
at the last judgment. 1 They would make 
the great separation of all men into two 
parts. 2 Children had guardian angels in 
heaven. 3 Angels did not know all 
things. 4 The devil had also his angels, 
which were demons. 5 Men would be 
with the angels in heaven. 6 

Jesus, then, was a man of his time, and 
he shared the beliefs of his time concern- 
ing angels, demons, the authenticity of 
the Law. With regard to the date of the 
end of the world he may have believed, 
he certainly did believe, that which the 
Jews of his age believed ; but he nowhere 
tells us that to be a Christian we must 
believe all that. To be his disciple, once 

i Matt. xiii. 39, 41, 49. 

2 Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv. 31, xxv. 31 ; Mark viii. 38 ; 
Luke xii. 22. 

3 Matt, xviii. 10. * Mark xiii. 32. 
5 Matt. xxv. 41. 6 Mark xii. 25. 



252 JESUS CHRIST 

again we repeat, one must follow him, 
live his life, enter into communion with 
him, — a very different thing. 

Let us also take notice that Jesus never 
gave commandments of his own which 
were to replace the ordinances of the 
Law. He confined himself to prescribing 
the commandments of the Old Testament. 1 

That is to say, he no more gave us 
duties to learn than doctrines to believe. 
He simply taught that whosoever is pene- 
trated with the spirit of the gospel will 
practise the gospel. To love God is the 
great means of changing the direction of 
one's life. Therefore the Lord's Prayer 
begins with the hallowing of the name of 
God; and to love God men must love 
Jesus, and believe in Jesus. 

The confidence in himself which Jesus 
required rested upon the consciousness of 
his moral perfection, — a consciousness all 
the more remarkable that it appeared in a 
world which had but small moral develop- 
ment. Nothing shows a general moral 
progress among the Jews of the first cen- 
tury. In this regard Jesus was not con- 

1 Matt. v. 19, xv. 4, xix. 17 f ., and parallel passages ; 
Luke p. 25 f. ; John xiv. 15, 21, xv. 12 f. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 253 

nected with the past ; he who was bound 
to it by so many ties of all kinds was not 
held to it by this tie. He was in no respect 
the last term of an evolution of the moral 
progress of his people ; and it was because 
he was fully convinced of his moral supe- 
riority, of his perfect holiness, that he asked 
his own to follow him. 

Jesus, then, brings to us no list of beliefs 
to confess and of dogmas to subscribe to ; 
but he does tell us what we must do to 
become his disciples. 

It is very remarkable that he is true to 
the Jewish spirit, in giving to his disciples, 
not ideas to accept, but acts to perform. 

The error of those persons is then plain 
who believe that to decide what is Chris- 
tian doctrine we must begin by making 
perfectly evident the thought of Jesus 
Christ. They fancy that Jesus brought to 
us doctrines to believe, which must have 
for us an exterior authority, a canon. Cer- 
tain Protestants are disposed to say, " The 
sayings of Jesus Christ are our Bible, 
our infallible authority, in the plenary in- 
spiration of which we believe. We carve 
out our Bible from within the Bible, and 
the teachings of Jesus Christ are for us 



254 JE8UB CHRIST 

what the whole Bible was for the theop- 
neusties of former times." 1 

Not at all: for Jesus asks of his own 
only to believe in him, to follow him, to 
love one another, to bear their cross after 
him, to pat their trust in him ; and it is a 
grave error to picture Jesus as giving us 
a doctrine independent of his person, and 
bringing us a complete and logical system. 
He never formulated abstract truths which 
must be accepted by an intellectual opera- 
tion. He never demands beliefs, but con- 
fidence in himself : and by this confidence 
he creates a new life in the soul, a reli- 
gious and moral life, communion with God. 

We who repel the notion of exterior au- 
thority of the Bible, saying, u It is to Jesus 
Christ that we must go," — are we replacing 
the authority of the Bible with that of Jesus 
Christ ? Xo doubt. Only we must clearly 
understand what we mean by the words 
u the authority of Jesus Christ." The 
only way of understanding them is by 
asking what Jesus himself wanted us to 
understand by his authority. He cer- 
tainly meant by it nothing else than con- 

1 I admit the supposition that the savings of Jesus 
are all authentic, which has first to be demonstrated. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 255 

fidence in him. The authority of others 
is made of the confidence with which 
they inspire us. It can be made of noth- 
ing else unless it is to be made of material 
force, which cannot here be in question. 1 

1 The religion of Jesus, Christianity, is, then, not a 
system of religious truths which we are invited to 
believe. Very many persons think that faith is noth- 
ing else than adhesion to a certain number of doc- 
trines. This wholly intellectual conception is that of 
Catholicism, from which Protestant orthodoxy has not 
yet been able to free itself. In consequence, to believe 
in the teaching of the Church is to be a Christian, and 
in virtue of this wholly Catholic notion the orthodox 
Protestant Synods have not confined themselves to 
setting forth that which for them is Christian doc- 
trine (that is, their duty), but have insisted that men 
shall give adhesion to the confession of faith which 
they have formulated. As if aware of the error which 
the^y are committing, they are now making these 
Symbols as short as possible, reducing them to a more 
or less scanty minimum. But, minimum or not, they 
commit an error. They confound faith with intellec- 
tual adhesion to ready-made truths, formulated by the 
Church or its representatives. Now, if there is one 
certitude which stands out with evidence from all that 
in this book we have heard Jesus say, it is that faith is 
an act of the moral life, that its object is the person 
of the Christ, and that by faith each one enters into 
personal contact with him. Each Christian who has 
faith appropriates the Christ to himself, and should 
remain faithful to him, however much his dogmatic 
conceptions may become modified. Hence it results 
that faith in Jesus Christ may live, develop, and 



256 JESUS CHRIST 

It will perhaps be said: Of little conse- 
quence indeed are the purely intellectual 

triumph, whatever may be the believer's dogmatic 
notions. Men smile at faith independent of belief, 
because they do not know what it is. But it is not we 
who invented it, but Jesus himself who taught it ; and 
this notion is all the more certainly historic because 
it is in accord with the Jewish society in the midst of 
which it arose. We have said that in this society the 
idea mattered little. Men believed this or that with 
the intellect, but they cared only for the rite 
performed. 

No doubt Jesus transformed this way of looking at 
things ; he cared nothing for the rite ; for example, he 
broke the Sabbath, but he replaced the rite by his own 
person. He cared for only one thing, he insisted on 
only one thing, but he insisted on this with great 
rigor, — that men should attach themselves to him, 
live and die for him, unite themselves to him by a 
deep and living faith, by a moral act which binds 
their whole being to him. The rest matters little. 

Thus we escape from the objection which has been 
made to our way of thinking. It has been said : 
" Faith independent of belief means nothing. Faith 
must have an object." No doubt, we reply ; and its 
object is the person of Jesus Christ. Faith is not, 
then, a purely subjective sentiment, but it is independ- 
ent of historical beliefs, for which study is necessary. 
What would the laborer, the peasant, the uncultured 
man do, if in order to have saving faith he must inves- 
tigate facts, that is, pursue a course of study ? A 
purely historic event, M. Lachelier well says, (a) can- 
not be an object of faith, precisely because it is his- 
toric, and by this quality an object of knowledge. 

(a) See ante, page 94. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 257 

beliefs of Jesus. He was ignorant of sci- 
entific discoveries which we have made 
and are making every day; he knew 
nothing of modern astronomy, neither 
had he our theological knowledge; but 
he had an opinion about himself, and 
when he asks men to believe in him, 
does he mean by that, believe in what 
he thinks about himself? 

No; for the two notions are different. 
A child who believes in his father, who 
has confidence in him, does not necessarily 
believe what his father thinks about him- 
self. Most generally he does not know, 
and perhaps could not even understand, 
what he thinks. His father may consider 
himself a genius, and may be mistaken ; 
the child has confidence simply because his 
father is good and strong, takes care of 
him, gives him his daily bread, watches 
over him. He knows of his father that 
of which he has had experience, and even 
about this he does not reason; he feels 
instinctively that his confidence in his 
father is well placed: that is all. He 
cannot know anything that lies outside 
of this feeling and confidence. A truth 
which has been neither experienced nor 
17 



258 JESUS CHRIST 

lived remains beyond us, and is for us as 
if it were not. 1 The child's confidence 
of which I speak rests, then, solely upon 
practical experience such as is within the 
powers of the child. He believes in his 
father's authority because his father in- 
spires him with confidence and he has 
felt his authority. 

Later, when he is at an age to reason 
and reflect, he may be able to conclude, 
from what he knows and from what he 
has seen, that his father is this or that. 
This will be a doctrine about his father; 
but before formulating this doctrine he 
will have lived by his faith, will have 
been happy in it, will have been his 
father's disciple, will have obeyed him 
even in things which he has not always 
understood. 

In the same way we, if we consider our- 
selves competent to discern in the words 
of Jesus about himself any affirmations 
which explain what he is, which aid us 
to understand the source of the good he 
has done us, to comprehend the cause of 

1 "En religion toute verite hors de nous n'est ni 
possedee ni connue." Vinet, Nouvelles Etudes evang€- 
liques, second edition, page 368. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 259 

the salvation we have found in him and 
experienced in our souls, very well, let us 
try! Let us be theologians, for it is the 
business of theologians to discuss these 
things. 

Some one may say that Jesus was simply 
a holy man, and that his divinity was 
purely moral. Another may discover in 
him the second person of the Trinity, as 
the Athanasian Symbol sets him forth. 
The latter may, perhaps, be right : we pre- 
judge nothing, we condemn a priori no 
formula, no dogmatic decree of the Church. 
We only say that all that comes after 
faith in Jesus and assurance of salvation 
possessed in him. The drowning man 
clings to his savior, holds fast to him, 
makes himself one with him, and after- 
ward, when he is saved, he may put to 
himself questions about his savior, and 
ask himself who this may be who was 
strong enough to save him ; but he began 
by having confidence in him. Intellectual 
theories come afterward; and the simple 
believer who has not time to study, and 
who neither can nor ought to accept 
blindly the teachings of the Church, 
experiences the salvation which is in 



260 JESUS CHRIST 

Jesus Christ, and says, "Whether this 
man be a sinner or not, I know not: 
one thing I know: whereas I was blind, 
now I see." 1 

1 John ix. 15. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 261 



CONCLUSION 

T^7E have contemplated Jesus, have 
sought to see him as he was, to 
hear him as entirely and as truly as pos- 
sible ; we have tried to know him : hut 
it was impossible for our curiosity to re- 
main disinterested. Yet it must do so, 
says the historian, if you desire a perfectly 
authentic testimony and a perfectly faith- 
ful picture. We cannot consent to con- 
sider such a position the true one. The 
abstraction of the intellect is always 
withering to the heart, and how shall we 
admit that in this case the heart has not 
its word to say ? To confine ourselves to 
saying of Jesus, " I admire him," without 
saying to him, " I believe in thee," — would 
not this be to condemn ourselves before- 
hand to have only a sterile acquaintance 
with him, insufficient and incomplete ? 

But how shall we reach the point of 
saying " I believe " ? Historical testimony 
cannot suffice : it is impossible to prove 



262 JESUS' CHRIST 

irrefutably that Christianity is true. 
Formerly men based their apologetic on 
the miracles, and the prophecies that 
were supposed to have come true; but 
this method is outworn and absolutely 
overthrown. 

Shall we, then, attempt to show that 
Christianity is true because it responds 
to the needs of the human soul, and be- 
cause there is a pre-established harmony 
between man and the gospel ? Vinet was 
the eloquent and fully persuaded defender 
of this sort of apologetic. But is it 
entirely adapted to the present require- 
ments of thought? Can it restore in our 
modern world belief in the Biblical reve- 
lation and in Christian verities? Many 
dispute it. 

Yet the subjective method is the only 
possible method to-day. We must adhere 
closely to moral truth, — never call evil 
good and good evil : keep and conserve the 
great and unassailable certitudes, cling to 
them, and never on any pretext or for any 
reason let go of this plank of safety. 
Here effort is necessaiy. Men must will, 
— must will never to sacrifice conscience, 
will to remain faithful to duty, will to do 






DURING HIS MINISTRY 263 

what Jesus called the will of God. 1 Then 
one has faith. This faith is an act of will, 
but it is not blind ; it is the faith born of 
the experience of him whose eyes have 
been opened. 

It is impossible to prove that Jesus was 
not a " sinner ; " but I would say to the 
non-believer, it is impossible for you to 
prove to me that he was one. And that 
is sufficient for me, for " whereas I was 
blind, now I see." 2 I admit that my ex- 
perience is wholly subjective ; but pre- 
cisely because it is subjective it is sufficient 
for me, for it is I who have had it. 

But it must be had ; and let Christians 
not forget that they are strong only so 
far as they are extraordinary men, super- 
natural men. The affirmation of the su- 
pernatural on their lips is useless if the 
supernatural does not blaze forth in their 
lives. The great objection to Christianity 
is precisely this, — the insufficiency of 
Christian lives. When Christians show 
that Jesus Christ has changed them, that 
the preaching of the preparation of the 
kingdom by the renewing of hearts is as 
powerful as formerly, then Jesus Christ 
i John vii. 17. 2 John ix. 25. 



264 JESUS CHRIST 

himself will be proved ; his gospel will be 
sa^ed. 

During his entire ministry, whatever 
might be the passing events and the ex- 
ternal circumstances of his life, Jesus was 
absolutely and irrefragably convinced that 
righteousness would triumph, that goodness 
would be conqueror, that the kingdom of 
God would come. This conviction was 
the strength and joy of his life. To this 
certitude was joined another, ever growing 
brighter and stronger in his soul, that 
the triumph of righteousness, of the right 
and the good, would be brought about by 
him, and that he should be the hero of 
the victory to come. 

In presence of such a being, a being 
who had such moral greatness and such 
compassion, who possessed so absolute a 
conviction, who made such unheard-of 
demands, who showed so entire a devotion, 
and who enjoyed a life in God and by him 
so deep, so intense, so evidently certain, 
the exclamation of Thomas is not too 
strong ; it bursts from our hearts and lips ; 
we utter to Jesus this cry of obedience 
and adoration, " My Lord and my God ! " * 

1 John xx. 28. 



DURING HIS MINISTRY 265 

I close this second volume at the arrival 
of Jesus at Jerusalem for the Feast of 
Tabernacles, in the beginning of the month 
of October in the year 29. There remains 
for me to describe the few months which 
preceded his death, his trial, his execution, 
and, finally, his life beyond the tomb, his 
resurrection. This will be the subject of 
a third volume ; and thus I shall complete 
the treatment of the three questions which 
my general title presupposes, — the person, 
the authority, and the work of Jesus, — 
questions to which, as I hope, many pages 
of the present volume have already made 
answer. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: July 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 

Cranhpnv Tnwnshin PA 1RORE 



^m v«. m. jp 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 227 615 A # 



£■ 






VJ V * 



■ 

'«>•* 



■ 



Atf 



